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War in the Garden 
of Eden 




'//^/'i / /.f"'-/ /'"^y '6 " /,. 



Korii.it Roosevelt 

From the (Iniwiiiif by .lohn S. Sar«.-iil, July S, 1<)17 



War in the Garden 
of Eden 



By 
Kermit Roosevelt 

Captain Nfotor Machine-Gun Corpi 

British tipcditionary Forces 

Captain Field Artillery 

AmericaQ Expeditionary Forcei 



Illustrated from Photographs by the Author 



New York 

Charles Scribner's Sons 

1919 



list? 



Copyright, 1919, bt 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



Published September, 1919 



Copyright, 1919, by THE METROPOLITAN PUBLICATIONS, INC. 



UL 




©CLA5 353 26 



To 

The Memory of My Father 



Contents 



rAGB 



I. Off for Mesopotamia 3 

11. The Tigris Front 31 

III. Patrolling the Ruins of Babylon . . 63 

rV. Skirmishes and Reconnaissances Axonq 

THE Kurdish Front 85 

V. The Advance on the Euphrates , .101 

VI. Baghdad Sketches 135 

VII. The Attack on the Persian Front . . 153 

VIII. Back through Palestine 189 

IX. With the First Division in France and 

Germany 211 



Illustrations 

Kermit Roosevelt Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

Map of Mesopotamia showing region of the fighting . . 8 

Ashar Creek at Basra 14 

Golden Dome of Samarra 34 

Rafting down from Tekrit 34 

Captured Turkish camel corps 50 

Towing an armored car across a river 66 

Reconnaissance 66 

The Lion of Babylon 78 

A dragon on the palace wall 78 

Hauling out a badly bogged fighting car 92 

A Mesopotamian garage 92 

A water-wheel on the Euphrates 106 

A "Red Crescent" ambulance 124 

A jeweller's booth in the bazaar 140 

Indian cavalry bringing in prisoners after the charge . 158 

ix 



X ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACraa PAGE 

The Kurd and his wife 168 

Sheik Muttar and the two Kurds 168 

Kirkuk 180 

A street in Jerusalem 196 

Japanese destroyers passing through the gut at Taranto 206 



I 

off for Mesopotamia 



WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

I 

OFF .FOR MESOPOTAMIA 

It was at Taranto that we embarked for 
Mesopotamia. Reinforcements were sent out 
from England in one of two ways — either all 
the way round the Cape of Good Hope, or by 
train through France and Italy down to the 
desolate little seaport of Taranto, and thence 
by transport over to Egypt, through the Suez 
Canal, and on down the Red Sea to the Indian 
Ocean and the Persian Gulf. The latter 
method was by far the shorter, but the sub- 
marine situation in the Mediterranean was 
such that convoying troops was a matter of 
great diflBculty. Taranto is an ancient Greek 
town, situated at the mouth of a landlocked 
harbor, the entrance to which is a narrow 
channel, certainly not more than two hundred 
yards across. The old part of the town is 
built on a hill, and the alleys and runways 
winding among the great stone dwellings serve 

as streets. As is the case with maritime towns, 

s 



4 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

it is along the wharfs that the most interest 
centres. During one afternoon I wandered 
through the old town and listened to the fisher- 
folk singing as they overhauled and mended 
their nets. Grouped around a stone archway- 
sat six or seven women and girls. They were 
evidently members of one family — a grand- 
mother, her daughters, and their children. 
The old woman, wild, dark, and hawk-featured, 
was blind, and as she knitted she chanted 
some verses. I could only understand occa- 
sional words and phrases, but it was evidently 
a long epic. At intervals her listeners would 
break out in comments as they worked, but, 
like *'Othere, the old sea-captain," she "neither 
paused nor stirred." 

There are few things more desolate than 
even the best situated "rest-camps" — the long 
lines of tents set out with military precision, 
the trampled grass, and the board walks; but 
the one at Taranto where we awaited embarka- 
tion was peculiarly dismal even for a rest- 
camp. So it happened that when Admiral Mark 
Kerr, the commander of the Mediterranean 
fleet, invited me to be his guest aboard H.M.S. 
Queen until the transport should sail, it was 
in every way an opportunity to be appreciated. 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 5 

In the British Empire the navy is the "senior 
service," and I soon found that the tradition 
for the hospitaHty and cultivation of its officers 
was more than justified. The admiral had 
travelled, and read, and written, and no more 
pleasant evenings could be imagined than 
those spent in listening to his stories of the 
famous writers, statesmen, and artists who 
were numbered among his friends. He had 
always been a great enthusiast for the devel- 
opment of aerial warfare, and he was recently'^ 
in Nova Scotia in command of the giant Hand- 
ley -Page machine which was awaiting favorable 
weather conditions in order to attempt the non- 
stop transatlantic flight. Among his poems^ 
stands out the "Prayer of Empire," which, 
oddly enough, the former German Emperor 
greatly admired, ordering it distributed 
throughout the imperial navy ! The Kaiser's 
feelings toward the admiral have suffered an 
abrupt change, but they would have been 
even more hostile had England profited by 
his warnings: 

" There's no menace in preparedness, no threat in being 
strong, 
If the people's brain be healthy and they think no 
thought of wrong." 



6 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

After four or five most agreeable days aboard 
the Queen the word came to embark, and I 
was duly transferred to the Saxoriy an old 
Union Castle liner that was to run us straight 
through to Busra. 

As we steamed out of the harbor we were 
joined by two diminutive Japanese destroyers 
which were to convoy us. The menace of the 
submarine being particularly felt in the Adri- 
atic, the transports travelled only by night 
during the first part of the voyage. To a lands- 
man it was incomprehensible how it was possi- 
ble for us to pursue our zigzag course in the 
inky blackness and avoid collisions, particularly 
when it was borne in mind that our ship was 
English and our convoyers were Japanese. Dur- 
ing the afternoon we were drilled in the method 
of abandoning ship, and I was put in charge of a 
lifeboat and a certain section of the ropes that 
were to be used in our descent over the side into 
the water. Between twelve and one o'clock that 
night we were awakened by three blasts, the 
preconcerted danger-signal. Slipping into my 
life-jacket, I groped my way to my station on 
deck. The men were filing up in perfect order 
and with no show of excitement. A ship's 
oflBicer passed and said he had heard that we 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 7 

had been torpedoed and were taking in water. 
For fifteen or twenty minutes we knew nothing 
further. A Scotch captain who had charge of 
the next boat to me came over and whispered : 
*'It looks as if we'd go down. I have just seen 
a rat run out along the ropes into my boat ! " 
That particular rat had not been properly 
brought up, for shortly afterward we were 
told that we were not sinking. We had been 
rammed amidships by one of the escorting 
destroyers, but the breach was above the 
water-line. We heard later that the destroyer, 
though badly smashed up, managed to make 
land in safety. 

We laid up two days in a harbor on the 
Albanian coast, spending the time pleasantly 
enough in swimming and sailing, while we 
waited for a new escort. Another night's run 
put us in Navarino Bay. The grandfather of 
Lieutenant Finch Hatton, one of the oflScers 
on board, commanded the Allied forces in the 
famous battle fought here in 1827, when the 
Turkish fleet was vanquished and the inde- 
pendence of Greece assured. 

Several days more brought us to Port Said, 
and after a short delay we pushed on through 
the canal and into the Red Sea. It was 



8 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

August, and when one talks of the Red Sea 
in August there is no further need for com- 
ment. The Saxon had not been built for the 
tropics. She had no fans, nor ventilating 
system such as we have on the United Fruit 
boats. Some unusually intelligent stokers had 
deserted at Port Said, and as we were in con- 
sequence short-handed, it was suggested that 
any volunteers would be given a try. Finch 
Hatton and I felt that our years in the tropics 
should qualify us, and that the exercise would 
improve our dispositions. We got the exer- 
cise. Never have I felt anything as hot, and 
I have spent August in Yuma, Ari-zona, and 
been in Italian Somaliland and the Amazon 
Valley. The shovels and the handles of the 
wheelbarrows blistered our hands. 

We had a number of cases of heat-stroke, 
and the hospital facilities on a crowded trans- 
port can never be all that might be desired. 
The first military burial at sea was deeply im- 
pressive. There was a lane of Tommies drawn 
up with their rifles reversed and heads bowed; 
the short, classic burial service was read, and 
the body, wrapped in the Union Jack, slid 
down over the stern of the ship. Then the 
bugles rang out in the haunting, mournful 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 9 

strains of the "Last Post," and the service 
ended with all singing "Abide With Me.'* 

We sweltered along down the Red Sea and 
around into the Indian Ocean. We wished to 
call at Aden in order to disembark some of our 
sick, but were ordered to continue on without 
touching. Our duties were light, and we 
spent the time playing cards and reading. 
The Tommies played "house" from dawn till 
dark. It is a game of the lotto variety. 
Each man has a paper with numbers written 
on squares; one of them draws from a bag 
slips of paper also marked with numbers, calls 
them out, and those having the number he 
calls cover it, until all the numbers on their 
paper have been covered. The first one to 
finish wins, and collects a penny from each of 
the losers. The caller drones out the num- 
bers with a monotony only equalled by the 
brain-fever bird, and quite as disastrous to the 
nerves. There are certain conventional nick- 
names: number one is always "Kelley's eye," 
eleven is "legs eleven," sixty-six is "clickety 
click," and the highest number is "top o' the 
'ouse." There is another game that would be 
much in vogue were it not for the vigilance 
of the oflScers. It is known as "crown and 



10 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

anchor," and the advantage Hes so strongly in 
favor of the banker that he cannot fail to make 
a good income, and therefore the game is for- 
bidden under the severest penalties. 

As we passed through the Strait of Ormuz 
memories of the early days of European suprem- 
acy in the East crowded back, for I had read 
many a vellum-covered volume in Portuguese 
about the early struggles for supremacy in the 
gulf. One in particular interested me. The Por- 
tuguese were hemmed in at Ormuz by a greatly 
superior English force. The expected rein- 
forcements never arrived, and at length their 
resources sank so low, and they sujffered in 
addition, or in consequence, so greatly from 
disease that they decided to sail forth and give 
battle. This they did, but before they joined 
in fight the ships of the two admirals sailed 
up near each other — the Portuguese commander 
sent the British a gorgeous scarlet ceremonial 
cloak, the British responded by sending him 
a handsomely embossed sword. The British 
admiral donned the cloak, the Portuguese 
grasped the sword; a page brought each a 
cup of wine; they pledged each other, threw 
the goblets into the sea, and fell to. The 
British were victorious. Times indeed have 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 11 

sadly changed in the last three hundred years ! 

I was much struck with the accuracy of the 
geographical descriptions in Camoens' letters 
and odes. He is the greatest of the Portuguese 
poets and wrote the larger part of his master- 
epic, *'The Lusiad," while exiled in India. For 
seventeen years he led an adventurous life in 
the East; and it is easy to recognize many har- 
bors and stretches of coast line from his inimi- 
table portrayal. 

Busra, our destination, lies about sixty miles 
from the mouth of the Shatt el Arab, which is 
the name given to the combined Tigris and 
Euphrates after their junction at Kurna, an- 
other fifty or sixty miles above. At the entrance 
to the river lies a sand-bar, effectively block- 
ing access to boats of as great draft as the 
Saxon. We therefore transshipped to some 
British India vessels, and exceedingly comfort- 
able we found them, designed as they were for 
tropic runs. We steamed up past the Island 
of Abadan, where stand the refineries of the 
Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It is hard to 
overestimate the important part that company 
has played in the conduct of the Mesopotamian 
campaign. Motor transport was nowhere else 
a greater necessity. There was no possi- 



12 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

bility of living on the country; at first, at 
all events. General Dickson, the director of 
local resources, later set in to so build up 
and encourage agriculture that the army should 
eventually be supported, in the staples of life, 
by local produce. Transportation was ever 
a hard nut to crack. Railroads were built, 
but though the nature of the country called 
for little grading, obtaining rails, except in 
small quantities, was impossible. The ones 
brought were chiefly secured by taking up the 
double track of Indian railways. This process 
naturally had a limit, and only lines of prime 
importance could be laid down. Thus you 
could go by rail from Busra to Amara, and from 
Kut to Baghdad, but the stretch between 
Amara and Kut had never been built, up to 
the time I left the country. General Maude 
once told me that pressure was being continu- 
ally brought by the high command in England 
or India to have that connecting-link built, but 
that he was convinced that the rails would be 
far more essential elsewhere, and had no inten- 
tion of yielding. 

I don't know the total number of motor 
vehicles, but there were more than five thou- 
sand Fords alone. On several occasions small 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 13 

columns of infantry were transported in Fords, 
five men and the driver to a car. Indians of 
every caste and religion were turned into driv- 
ers, and although it seemed sufficiently out of 
place to come across wizened, khaki-clad Indo- 
Chinese driving lorries in France, the incon- 
gruity was even more marked when one be- 
held a great bearded Sikh with his turbaned 
head bent over the steering-wheel of a Ford. 

Modern Busra stands on the banks of Ashar 
Creek. The ancient city whence Sinbad the 
sailor set forth is now seven or eight miles in- 
land, buried under the shifting sands of the 
desert. Busra was a seaport not so many 
hundreds of years ago. Before that again, 
Kurna was a seaport, and the two rivers prob- 
ably only joined in the ocean, but they have 
gradually enlarged the continent and forced 
back the sea. The present rate of encroach- 
ment amounts, I was told, to nearly twelve 
feet a year. 

The modern town has increased many fold 
with the advent of the Expeditionary Force, 
and much of the improvement is of a neces- 
sarily permanent nature; in particular the 
wharfs and roads. Indeed, one of the most 
striking features of the Mesopotamian cam- 



14 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

paign is the permanency of the improvements 
made by the British. In order to conquer the 
country it was necessary to develop it, — ^build 
railways and bridges and roads and tele- 
graph systems, — and it has all been done in a 
substantial manner. It is impossible to con- 
template with equanimity the possibility of the 
country reverting to a rule where all this 
progress would soon disappear and the former 
stagnancy and injustice again hold sway. 

As soon as we landed I wandered off to the 
bazaar — "suq" is what the Arab calls it. In 
Busra there are a number of excellent ones. 
By that I don't mean that there are art trea- 
sures of the East to be found in them, for al- 
most everything could be duplicated at a better 
price in New York. It is the grouping of 
wares, the mode of sale, and, above all, the 
salesmen and buyers that make a bazaar — 
the old bearded Persian sitting cross-legged in 
his booth, the motley crowd jostling through 
the narrow, vaulted passageway, the veiled 
women, the hawk-featured, turbaned men, the 
Jews, the Chaldeans, the Arabs, the Armenians, 
the stalwart Kurds, and through it all a leaven 
of khaki-clad Indians, purchasing for the regi- 
mental mess. All these and an ever-present 




u 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 15 

exotic, intangible something are what the 
bazaar means. Close by the entrance stood 
a booth festooned with lamps and lanterns of 
every sort, with above it scrawled "Aladdin- 
Ibn-Said." My Arabic was not at that time 
sufficient to enable me to discover from the 
owner whether he claimed illustrious ancestry 
or had merely been named after a patron saint. 

A few days after landing at Busra we em- 
barked on a paddle-wheel boat to pursue our 
way up-stream the five hundred intervening 
miles to Baghdad. Along the banks of the 
river stretched endless miles of date-palms. 
We watched the Arabs at their work of fertil- 
izing them, for in this country these palms 
have to depend on human agency to transfer 
the pollen. At Kurna we entered the Garden 
of Eden, and one could quite appreciate the 
feelings of the disgusted Tommy who ex- 
claimed: *'If this is the Garden, it wouldn't 
take no bloody angel with a flaming sword to 
turn me back." The direct descendant of the 
Tree is pointed out; whether its properties 
are inherited I never heard, but certainly the 
native would have little to learn by eating the 
fruit. 

Above Kurna the river is no longer lined 



16 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

with continuous palm -groves; desert and 
swamps take their place — the abode of the 
amphibious, nomadic, marsh Arab. An un- 
ruly customer he is apt to prove himself, and 
when he is *' wanted" by the officials, he re- 
tires to his watery fastnesses, where he can 
remain in complete safety unless betrayed by 
his comrades. On the banks of the Tigris 
stands Ezra's tomb. It is kept in good repair 
through every vicissitude of rule, for it is a 
holy place to Moslem and Jew and Christian 
alike. 

The third night brought us to Amara. The 
evening was cool and pleasant after the scorch- 
ing heat of the day, and Finch Hatton and I 
thought that we would go ashore for a stroll 
through the town. As we proceeded down 
the bank toward the bridge, I caught sight of 
a sentry walking his post. His appearance was 
so very important and efficient that I slipped 
behind my companion to give him a chance 
to explain us. "Halt! Who goes there?'* 
"Friend," replied Finch Hatton. "Advance, 
friend, and give the countersign." F. H. started 
to advance, followed by a still suspicious me, 
and rightly so, for the Tommy, evidently mem- 
ber of a recent draft, came forward to meet us 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 17 

with lowered bayonet, remarking in a business- 
like manner: *'There isn't any countersign.*' 

Except for the gunboats and monitors all 
river traffic is controlled by the Inland Water 
Transport Service. The officers are recruited 
from all the world over. I firmly believe that 
no river of any importance could be mentioned 
but what an officer of the I. W. T. could be 
found who had navigated it. The great req- 
uisite for transports on the Tigris was a 
very light draft, and to fill the requirements 
boats were requisitioned ranging from penny 
steamers of the Thames to river-craft of the 
Irrawaddy. Now in bringing a penny steamer 
from London to Busra the submarine is one of 
the lesser perils, and in supplying the wants of 
the Expeditionary Force more than eighty ves- 
sels were lost at sea, frequently with all aboard. 

As was the custom, we had a barge lashed 
to either side. These barges are laden with 
troops, or horses, or supplies. In our case we 
had the first Bengal regiment — a. new experi- 
ment, undertaken for political reasons. The 
Bengali is the Indian who most readily takes 
to European learning. Rabindranath Tagore 
is probably the most widely known member of 
the race. They go to Calcutta University and 



18 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

learn a smattering of English and absorb a 
certain amount of undigested general knowl- 
edge and theory. These partially educated 
Bengalis form the Babu class, and many are 
employed in the railways. They delight in 
complicated phraseology, and this coupled with 
their accent and seesaw manner of speaking 
supply the English a constant source of cari- 
cature. As a race they are inclined to be vain 
and boastful, and are ever ready to nurse a 
grievance against the British Government, 
feeling that they have been provided with an 
education but no means of support. The 
government felt that it might help to calm 
them if a regiment were recruited and sent to 
Mesopotamia. How they would do in actual 
fighting had never been demonstrated up to 
the time I left the country, but they take readily 
to drill, and it was amusing to hear them or- 
dering each other about in their clipped Eng- 
lish. They were used for garrisoning Baghdad. 
After we left Amara we continued our wind- 
ing course up-stream. A boat several hours 
ahead may be seen only a few hundred yards 
distant across the desert. The banks are so 
flat and level that it looks as if the other ves- 
sels were steaming along on land. The Arab 
river-craft was most picturesque. At sunset 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 19 

a mahela, bearing down with filled sail, might 
have been the model for Maxfield Parrish's 
Pirate Ship. The Arab women ran along the 
bank beside us, carrying baskets of eggs and 
chickens, and occasionally melons. They were 
possessed of surprising endurance, and would 
accompany us indefinitely, heavily laden as 
they were. Their robes trailed in the wind 
as they jumped ditches, screaming out their 
wares without a moment's pause. An Indian 
of the boat's crew was haggling with a woman 
about a chicken. He threw her an eight-anna 
piece. She picked up the money but would 
not hand him the chicken, holding out for her 
original price. He jumped ashore, intending 
to take the chicken. She had a few yards* 
start and made the most of it. In and out 
they chased, over hedge and ditch, down the 
bank and up again. Several times he almost 
had her. She never for a moment ceased 
screeching — an operation which seemed to 
affect her wind not a particle. At the end of 
fifteen minutes the Indian gave up amid the 
delighted jeers of his comrades, and returned 
shamefaced and breathless to jump aboard the 
boat as we bumped against the bank on round- 
ing a curve. 

One evening we halted where, not many 



20 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF , EDEN 

months before, the last of the battles of Sunnai- 
yat had been fought. There for months the 
British had been held back, while their be- 
leaguered comrades in Kut could hear the roar 
of the artillery and hope against hope for the 
relief that never reached them. It was one 
phase of the campaign that closely approxi- 
mated the gruelling trench warfare in France. 
The last unsuccessful attack was launched a 
week before the capitulation of the garrison, 
and it was almost a year later before the 
position was eventually taken. The front-line 
trenches were but a short distance apart, and 
each side had developed a strong and elaborate 
system of defense. One flank was protected 
by an impassable marsh and the other by the 
river. When we passed, the field presented an 
unusually gruesome appearance even for a 
battle-field, for the wandering desert Arabs 
had been at work, and they do not clean up 
as thoroughly as the African hyena. A num- 
ber had paid the penalty through tampering 
with unexploded grenades and *'dud" shells, 
and left their own bones to be scattered around 
among the dead they had been looting. The 
trenches were a veritable Golgotha with skulls 
everj^where and dismembered legs still clad 
with puttees and boots. 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 21 

At Kut we disembarked to do the remain- 
ing hundred miles to Baghdad by rail instead 
of winding along for double the distance by 
river, with a good chance of being hung up for 
hours, or even days, on some shifting sand-bar. 
At first sight Kut is as unpromising a spot as 
can well be imagined, with its scorching heat 
and its sand and the desolate mud-houses, 
but in spite of appearances it is an impor- 
tant and thriving little town, and daily becom- 
ing of more consequence. 

The railroad runs across the desert, following 
approximately the old caravan route to Bagh- 
dad. A little over half-way the line passes the 
remaining arch of the great hall of Ctesiphon. 
This hall is one hundred and forty-eight feet 
long by seventy-six broad. The arch stands 
eighty-five feet high. Around it, beneath the 
mounds of desert sand, lies all that remains of 
the ancient city. As a matter of fact the city 
is by no means ancient as such things go in 
Mesopotamia, dating as it does from the third 
century B. C, when it was founded by the 
successors of Alexander the Great. 

My first night in Baghdad I spent in Gen- 
eral Maude's house, on the river-bank. The 
general was a striking soldierly figure of a 
man, standing well over six feet. His military 



22 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

career was long and brilliant. His first service 
was in the Coldstream Guards. He distin- 
guished himself in South Africa. Early In the 
present war he was severely wounded In France. 
Upon recovering he took over the Thirteenth 
Division, which he commanded in the disas- 
trous Gallipoli campaign, and later brought 
out to Mesopotamia. When he reached the 
East the situation was by no means a happy 
one for the British. General Townshend was 
surrounded in Kut, and the morale of the Turk 
was excellent after the successes he had met 
with in Gallipoli. In the end of August, 1916, 
four months after the fall of Kut, General 
Maude took over the command of the Meso- 
potamian forces. On the 11th of March of the 
following year he occupied Baghdad, thereby 
re-establishing completely the British prestige 
In the Orient. One of Germany's most serious 
miscalculations was with regard to the Indian 
situation. She felt confident that, working 
through Persia and Afghanistan, she could 
stir up sufficient trouble, possibly to completely 
overthrow British rule, but certainly to keep 
the English so occupied with uprisings as to 
force them to send troops to India rather than 
withdraw them thence for use elsewhere. The 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 23 

utter miscarriage of Germany's plans is, in- 
deed, a fine tribute to Great Britain. The 
Emir of Afghanistan did probably more than 
any single native to thwart German treachery 
and intrigue, and every friend of the Allied 
cause must have read of his recent assassina- 
tion with a very real regret. 

When General Maude took over the com-' 
mand, the effect of the Holy War that, at the 
Kaiser's instigation, was being preached in 
the mosques had not as yet been determined. 
This jehad, as it was called, proposed to unite 
all "True Believers" against the invading 
Christians, and give the war a strongly re- 
ligious aspect. The Germans hoped by this 
means to spread mutiny among the Moham- 
medan troops, which formed such an appreci- 
able element of the British forces, as well as to 
fire the fury of the Turks and win as many of 
the Arabs to their side as possible. The Arab 
thoroughly disliked both sides. The Turk 
oppressed him, but did so in an Oriental, and 
hence more or less comprehensible, manner. 
The English gave him justice, but it was an 
Occidental justice that he couldn't at first 
understand or appreciate, and he was dis- 
tinctly inclined to mistrust it. In course of 



24 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

time he would come to realize its advantages. 
Under Turkish rule the Arab was oppressed 
by the Turk, but then he in turn could op- 
press the Jew, the Chaldean, and Nestorian 
Christians, and the wretched Armenian. Un- 
der British rule he suddenly found these latter 
on an equal footing with him, and he felt that 
this did not compensate the lifting from his 
shoulders of the Turkish burden. Then, too, 
when a race has been long oppressed and down- 
trodden, and suddenly finds itself on an equal- 
ity with its oppressor, it is apt to become arro- 
gant and overbearing. This is exactly what 
happened, and there was bad feeling on all 
sides in consequence. However, real funda- 
mental justice is appreciated the world over, 
once the native has been educated up to it, 
and can trust in its continuity. 

The complex nature of the problems facing 
the army commander can be readily seen. 
He was an indefatigable worker and an unsur- 
passed organizer. The only criticism I ever 
heard was that he attended too much to the 
details himself and did not take his subordi- 
nates sufficiently into his confidence. A bril- 
liant leader, beloved by his troops, his loss 
was a severe blow to the Allied cause. 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 25 

Baghdad is often referred to as the great 
example of the shattered illusion. We most 
of us have read the Arabian Nights at an early 
age, and think of the abode of the caliphs as a 
dream city, steeped in what we have been 
brought up to think of as the luxury, romance, 
and glamour of the East. Now glamour is a 
delicate substance. In the all-searching glare 
of the Mesopotamian sun it is apt to appear 
merely tawdry. Still, a goodly number of 
years spent in wandering about in foreign 
lands had prepared me for a depreciation of 
the "stuff that dreams are made of," and I 
was not disappointed. It is unfortunate that 
the normal way to approach is from the south, 
and that that view of the city is flat and unin- 
teresting. Coming, as I several times had 
occasion to, from the north, one first catches 
sight of great groves of date-palms, with the 
tall minarets of the Mosque of Kazimain tow- 
ering above them; then a forest of minarets 
and blue domes, with here and there some 
graceful palm rising above the flat roofs of 
Baghdad. In the evening when the setting sun 
strikes the towers and the tiled roofs, and the 
harsh lights are softened, one is again in the 
land of Haroun-el-Raschid. 



26 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

The great covered bazaars are at all times 
capable of *' eating the hours," as the natives 
say. One could sit indefinitely in a coffee- 
house and watch the throngs go by — the stal- 
wart Kurdish porter with his impossible loads, 
the veiled women, the unveiled Christian or 
lower-class Arab women, the native police, 
the British Tommy, the kilted Scot, the desert 
Arab, all these and many more types wandered 
past. Then there was the gold and silver 
market, where the Jewish and Armenian artif- 
icers squatted beside their charcoal fires and 
haggled endlessly with their customers. These 
latter were almost entirely women, and they 
came both to buy and sell, bringing old brace- 
lets and anklets, and probably spending the 
proceeds on something newer that had taken 
their fancy. The workmanship was almost 
invariably poor and rough. Most of the 
women had their babies with them, little mites 
decked out in cheap finery and with their eye- 
lids thickly painted. The red dye from their 
caps streaked their faces, the flies settled on 
them at will, and they had never been washed. 
When one thought of the way one's own chil- 
dren were cared for, it seemed impossible that 
a sufficient number of these little ones could 



OFF FOR MESOPOTAMIA 27 

survive to carry on the race. The infant mor- 
tahty must be great, though the children one 
sees look fat and thriving. 

Baghdad is not an old city. Although there 
was probably a village on the site time out of 
mind, it does not come into any prominence 
until the eighth century of our era. As the 
residence of the Abasside caliphs it rapidly 
assumed an important position. The culmina- 
tion of its magnificence was reached in the end 
of the eighth century, under the rule of the 
world-famous Haroun-el-Raschid. It long con- 
tinued to be a centre of commerce and indus- 
try, though suffering fearfully from the various 
sieges and conquests which it underwent. In 
1258 the Mongols, under a grandson of the great 
Genghis Khan, captured the city and held it 
for a hundred years, until ousted by the Tar- 
tars under Tamberlane. It was plundered in 
turn by one Mongol horde after another until 
the Turks, under Murad the Fourth, eventually 
secured it. Naturally, after being the scene 
of so much looting and such massacres, there is 
little left of the original city of the caliphs. 
Then, too, in INIesopotamla there is practically 
no stone, and everything was built of brick, 
which readily lapses back to its original state. 



28 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

For this reason the invaders easily razed a 
conquered town, and Mesopotamia, so often 
called the "cradle of the world," retains but 
little trace of the races and civilizations that 
have succeeded each other in ruling the land. 
When the Tigris was low at the end of the 
summer season, we used to dig out from its 
bank great bricks eighteen inches square, on 
which was still distinctly traced the seal of 
Nebuchadnezzar. These, possibly the rem- 
nants of a quay, were all that remained of the 
times before the advent of the caliphs. 



II 

The Tigris Front 



II 

THE TIGRIS FRONT 

A few days after reaching Baghdad I left 
for Samarra, which was at that time the Tigris 
front. I was attached to the Royal Engineers, 
and my immediate commander was Major 
Morin, D. S. O., an able officer with an envia- 
ble record in France and Mesopotamia. The 
advance army of the Tigris was the Third In- 
dian Army Corps, under the command of 
General Cobbe, a possessor of the coveted, 
and invariably merited, Victoria Cross. The 
Engineers were efficiently commanded by Gen- 
eral Swiney. The seventy miles of railroad 
from Baghdad to Samarra were built by 
the Germans, being the only Mesopotamian 
portion of the much-talked-of Berlin-to-Bagh- 
dad Railway, completed before the war. It 
was admirably constructed, with an excellent 
road-bed, heavy rails and steel cross-ties made 
by Krupp. In their retreat the Turks had 
been too hurried to accomplish much in the 

31 



32 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

way of destruction other than burning down 
a few stations and blowing up the water-tow- 
ers. The roUing-stock had been left largely in- 
tact. There were no passenger-coaches, and 
you travelled either by flat or box car. Every 
one followed the Indian custom of carrying 
with them their bedding-rolls, and leather- 
covered wash-basin containing their washing- 
kit, as well as one of the comfortable rhoorkhee 
chairs. In consequence, although for travel 
by boat or train nothing was provided, there 
was no discomfort entailed. The trains were 
fitted out with anti-aircraft guns, for the Turk- 
ish aeroplanes occasionally tried to *'lay eggs," 
a by no means easy affair with a moving train 
as a target. Whatever the reason was, and I 
never succeeded in discovering it, the trains 
invariably left Baghdad in the wee small 
hours, and as the station was on the right 
bank across the river from the main town, and 
the boat bridges were cut during the night, we 
used generally, when returning to the front, 
to spend the first part of the night sleeping on 
the station platform. Generals or exalted staff 
oflScers could usually succeed in having a car 
assigned to them, and hauled up from the yard 
in time for them to go straight to bed in it. 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 33 

Frequently their trip was postponed, and an 
omniscient sergeant-major would indicate the 
car to the judiciously friendly, who could then 
enjoy a solid night's sleep. The run took 
anywhere from eight to twelve hours; but when 
sitting among the grain-bags on an open car, 
or comfortably ensconced in a chair in a "cov- 
ered goods," with Vingt Ans Apres, the time 
passed pleasantly enough in spite of the with- 
ering heat. 

While still a good number of miles away 
from Samarra we would catch sight of the sun 
glinting on the golden dome of the mosque, 
built over the cleft where the twelfth Imam, 
the Imam Mahdi, is supposed to have dis- 
appeared, and from which he is one day to 
reappear to establish the true faith upon earth. 
Many Arabs have appeared claiming to be the 
Mahdi, and caused trouble in a greater or less 
degree according to the extent of their follow- 
ing. The most troublous one in our day was 
the man who besieged Kharthoum and cap- 
tured General "Chinese" Gordon and his men. 
Twenty -five years later, when I passed through 
the Sudan, there were scarcely any men of 
middle age left, for they had been wiped out 
almost to a man under the fearful rule of the 



34 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

Mahdi, a rule which might have served as 
prototype to the Germans in Belgium. 

Samarra is very ancient, and has passed 
through periods of great depression and equally 
great expansion. It was here in A. D. 363 
that the Roman Emperor Julian died from 
wounds received in the defeat of his forces at 
Ctesiphon. The golden age lasted about forty 
years, beginning in 836, when the Caliph Hu- 
tasim transferred his capital thither from 
Baghdad. During that time the city extended 
for twenty-one miles along the river-bank, 
with glorious palaces, the ruins of some of 
which still stand. The present-day town has 
sadly shrunk from its former grandeur, but still 
has an impressive look with its great walls and 
massive gateways. The houses nearest the 
walls are in ruins or uninhabited; but in peace- 
time the great reputation that the climate of 
Samarra possesses for salubrity draws to it 
many Baghdad families who come to pass the 
summer months. A good percentage of the 
inhabitants are Persians, for the eleventh and 
twelfth Shiah Imams are buried on the site 
of the largest mosque. The two main sects 
of Moslems are the Sunnis and the Shiahs; 
the former regard the three caliphs who fol- 
lowed Mohammed as his legitimate successors. 






Golden Dome of Samarra 




Rafting down from Tekrit 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 35 

whereas the latter hold them to be usurpers, 
and believe that his cousin and son-in-law, Ali, 
husband of Fatimah, together with their sons 
Husein and Hasan, are the prophet's true 
inheritors. Ali was assassinated near Nejef, 
which city is sacred to his memory, and his 
son Husein was killed at Kerbela; so these 
two cities are the greatest of the Shiah shrines. 
The Turks belong almost without exception 
to the Sunni sect, whereas the Persians and a 
large percentage of the Arabs inhabiting Meso- 
potamia are Shiahs. 

The country around Samarra is not unlike 
in character the southern part of Arizona and 
northern Sonora. There are the same barren 
hills and the same glaring heat. The soil is 
not sand, but a fine dust which permeates 
everything, even the steel uniform-cases which 
I had always regarded as proof against all con- 
ditions. The parching effect was so great 
that it was not only necessary to keep all 
leather objects thoroughly oiled but the covers 
of my books cracked and curled up until I 
hit upon the plan of greasing them well also. 
In the alluvial lowlands trench-digging was a 
simple affair, but along the hills we found a 
pebbly conglomerate that gave much trouble. 

Opinion was divided as to whether the Turk 



36 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

would attempt to advance down the Tigris. 
Things had gone badly with our forces in Pal- 
estine at the first battle of Gaza; but here we 
had an exceedingly strong position, and the 
consensus of opinion seemed to be that the 
enemy would think twice before he stormed it., 
Their base was at Tekrit, almost thirty miles 
away. However, about ten miles distant stood 
a small village called Daur, which the Turks 
held in considerable force. Between Daur 
and Samarra there was nothing but desert, 
with gazelles and jackals the only permanent 
inhabitants. Into this no man's land both 
sides sent patrols, who met in occasional skir- 
mishes. For reconnaissance work we used 
light-armored motor-cars, known throughout 
the army as Lam cars, a name formed by the 
initial letters of their titles. These cars were 
Rolls - Royces, and with their armor - plate 
weighed between three and three-quarters and 
four tons. They were proof against the ordinary 
bullet but not against the armor-piercing. 
When I came out to Mesopotamia I intended 
to lay my plans for a transfer to the cavalry, 
but after I had seen the cars at work I 
changed about and asked to be seconded to 
that branch of the service. 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 37 

A short while after my arrival our aeroplanes 
brought in word that the Turks were massing 
at Daur, and General Cobbe decided that when 
they launched forth he would go and meet 
them. Accordingly, we all moved out one 
night, expecting to give "Abdul," as the 
Tommies called him, a surprise. Whether it 
was that we started too early and their aero- 
planes saw us, or whether they were only 
making a feint, we never found out; but at all 
events the enemy fell back, and save for some 
advance-guard skirmishing and a few prison- 
ers, we drew a blank. We were not prepared 
to attack the Daur position, and so returned 
to Samarra to await developments. 

Meanwhile I busied myself searching for an 
Arab servant. Seven or eight years previous, 
when with my father in Africa, I had learned 
Swahili, and although I had forgotten a great 
deal of it, still I found it a help in taking up 
Arabic. Most of the officers had either British 
or Indian servants; in the former case they 
were known as batmen, and in the latter as 
bearers; but I decided to follow suit with the 
minority and get an Arab, and therefore learn 
Arabic instead of Hindustanee, for the former 
would be of vastly more general use. The town 



38 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

commandant, Captain Grieve of the Black 
Watch, after many attempts at length pro- 
duced a native who seemed, at any rate, more 
promising than the others that offered them- 
selves. Yusuf was a sturdy, rather surly-looking 
youth of about eighteen. Evidently not a pure 
Arab, he claimed various admixtures as the 
fancy took him, the general preference being 
Kurd. I always felt that there was almost cer- 
tainly a good percentage of Turk. His father 
had been a non-commissioned officer in the 
Turkish army, and at first I was loath to take 
him along on advances and attacks, for he 
would have been shown little mercy had he 
fallen into enemy hands. He was, however, in- 
sistent on asking to go with me, and I never 
saw him show any concern under fire. He 
spoke, in varying degrees of fluency, Kurdish, 
Persian, and Turkish, and was of great use to 
me for that reason. He became by degrees a 
very faithful and trustworthy follower, his 
great weakness being that he was a one-man's 
man, and although he would do anything for 
me, he was of little general use in an officers' 
mess. 

I had two horses, one a black mare that I 
called Soda, which means black in Arabic, and 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 39 

the other a hard-headed bay gelding that was 
game to go all day, totally unaffected by shell- 
fire, but exceedingly stubborn about choosing 
the direction in which he went. After numer- 
ous changes I came across an excellent syce 
to look after them. He was a wild, unkempt 
figure, with a long black beard — a dervish by 
profession, and certainly gave no one any 
reason to believe that he was more than half- 
witted. Indeed, almost all dervishes are in 
a greater or less degree insane; it is probably 
due to that that they have become dervishes, 
for the native regards the insane as under 
the protection of God. Dervishes go around 
practically naked, usually wearing only a few 
skins flung over the shoulder, and carrying a 
large begging-bowl. In addition they carry a 
long, sharp, iron bodkin, with a wooden ball 
at the end, having very much the appearance 
of a fool's bauble. They lead an easy life. 
When they take'a fancy to a house, they settle 
down near the gate, and the owner has to sup- 
port them as long as the whim takes them to 
stay there. To use force against a dervish 
would be looked upon as an exceedingly un- 
propitious affair to the true believer. Then, 
too, I have little doubt but that they are 



40 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

capable of making good use of their steel bod- 
kins. Why my dervish wished to give up 
his easy-going profession and take over the 
charge of my horses I never fully determined, 
but it must have been because he really loved 
horses and found that as a dervish pure and 
simple he had very little to do with them. 
When he arrived he was dressed in a very 
ancient gunny-sack, and it was not without 
much regret at the desecration that I provided 
him with an outfit of the regulation khaki. 

My duties took me on long rides about 
the country. Here, and throughout Meso- 
potamia, the great antiquity of this *' cradle 
of the world" kept ever impressing itself upon 
one, consciously or subconsciously. Every- 
where Were ruins ; occasionally a wall still 
reared itself clear of the all-enveloping dust, 
but generally all that remained were great 
mounds, where the desert had crept in and 
claimed its own, covering palace, house, and 
market, temple, synagogue, mosque, or church 
with its everlasting mantle. Often the streets 
could still be traced, but oftener not. The 
weight of ages was ever present as one rode 
among the ruins of these once busy, prosper- 
ous cities, now long dead and buried, how long 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 41 

no one knew, for frequently their very names 
were forgotten. Babylon, Ur of the Chaldees, 
Istabulat, Nineveh, and many more great cities 
of history are now nothing but names given to 
desert mounds. 

Close by Samarra stands a strange cork- 
screw tower, known by the natives as the Mal- 
wiyah. It is about a hundred and sixty feet 
high, built of brick, with a path of varying 
width winding up around the outside. No 
one knew its purpose, and estimates of its an- 
tiquity varied by several thousand years. One 
fairly well-substantiated story told that it had 
been the custom to kill prisoners by hurling 
them off its top. We found it exceedingly use- 
ful as an observation-post. In the same man- 
ner we used Julian's tomb, a great mound ris- 
ing up in the desert some five or six miles up- 
stream of the town. The legend is that when 
the Roman Emperor died of his wounds his 
soldiers, impressing the natives, built this as a 
mausoleum; but there is no ground whatever 
for this belief, for it would have been physically 
impossible for a harassed or retreating army 
to have performed a task of such magnitude. 
The natives call it *'The Granary," and claim 
that that was its original use. Before the war 



42 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

the Germans had started in excavating, and 
discovered shafts leading deep down, and on 
top the foundations of a palace. Around its 
foot may be traced roadways and circular 
plots, and especially when seen from an aero- 
plane it looks as if there had at one time been 
an elaborate system of gardens. 

We were continually getting false rumors 
about the movements of the Turks. We had 
believed that it would be impossible for them 
to execute a flank movement, at any rate in 
sufficient strength to be a serious menace, for 
from all the reports we could get, the wells 
were few and far between. Nevertheless, there 
was a great deal of excitement and some con- 
cern when one afternoon our aeroplanes came 
in with the report that they had seen a body 
of Turks that they estimated at from six 
to eight thousand marching round our right 
flank. The plane was sent straight back with 
instructions to verify most carefully the state- 
ment, and be sure that it was really men they 
had seen. They returned at dark with no alter- 
ation of their original report. As can well be 
imagined, that night was a crowded one for us, 
and the feeling ran high when next morning the 
enemy turned out to be several enormous herds 
of sheep. 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 43 

As part consequence of this we were ordered 
to make a thorough water reconnaissance, with 
a view of ascertaining how large a force could 
be watered on a march around our flank. I 
went off in an armored car with Captain Mar- 
shall of the Intelligence Service. Marshall had 
spent many years in Mesopotamia shipping 
liquorice to the American Tobacco Company, 
and he was known and trusted by the Arabs all 
along the Tigris from Kurna to Mosul. He 
spoke the language most fluently, but with an 
accent that left no doubt of his Caledonian 
home. We had with us a couple of old sheiks, 
and it was their first ride in an automobile. It 
was easy to see that one of them was having 
difficulty in maintaining his dignity, but I was 
not quite sure of the reason until we stopped 
a moment and he fairly flew out of the car. 
It didn't seem possible that a man able to ride 
ninety miles at a stretch on a camel, could be 
made ill by the motion of an automobile. 
However, such was the case, and we had great 
difficulty in getting him back into the car. 
We discovered far more wells than we had 
been led to believe existed, but not enough to 
make a flank attack a very serious menace. 

The mirage played all sorts of tricks, and 
the balloon observers grew to be very cautious 



44 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

in their assertions. In the early days of the 
campaign, at the battle of Shaiba Bund, a 
friendly mirage saved the British forces from 
what would have proved a very serious defeat. 
Suleiman Askari was commanding the Turkish 
forces, and things were faring badly with the 
British, when of a sudden to their amazement 
they found that the Turks were in full retreat. 
Their commanders had caught sight of the 
mirage of what was merely an ambulance and 
supply train, but it was so magnified that they 
believed it to be a very large body of reinforce- 
ments. The report ran that when Suleiman 
was told of his mistake, his chagrin was so 
great that he committed suicide. 

It was at length decided to advance on the 
Turkish forces at Daur. General Brooking 
had just made a most successful attack on 
the Euphrates front, capturing the town of 
Ramadie, with almost five thousand prisoners. 
It was believed to be the intention of the army 
commander to try to relieve the pressure 
against I General AUenby's forces in Palestine 
by attacking the enemy on all three of then: 
Mesopotamian fronts. Accordingly, we were 
ordered to march out after sunset one night, 
prepared to attack the enemy position at day- 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 45 

break. During a short halt by the last rays of 
the setting sun I caught sight of a number of 
Mohammedan soldiers prostrating themselves 
toward Mecca In their evening prayers, while 
their Christian or pagan comrades looked stol- 
idly on. It was late October, and although the 
days were still very hot and oppressive, the 
nights were almost bitterly cold. A night- 
march Is always a disagreeable business. The 
head of the column checks and halts, and those 
in the rear have no idea whether it is an in- 
voluntary stop for a few minutes, or whether 
they are to halt for an hour or more, owing to 
some complication of orders. So we stood 
shivering, and longed for a smoke, but of course 
that was strictly forbidden, for the cigarettes 
of an army would form a very good indication 
of its whereabouts on a dark night. All night 
we marched and halted, and started on again; 
the dust choked us, and the hours seemed in- 
terminable, until at last at two in the morning 
word was passed along that we could have an 
hour's sleep. The greater part of the year In 
Mesopotamia the regulation army dress con- 
sisted of a tunic and "shorts." These are 
long trousers cut off just above the knee, and the 
wearer may either use wrap puttees, or leather 



46 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

leggings, or golf stockings. They are a great 
help in the heat, as may easily be understood, 
and they allow, of course, much freer knee 
action, particularly when your clothes are wet. 
The reverse side of the medal reads that when 
you try to sleep without a blanket on a cold 
night, you find that your knees are uncom- 
fortably exposed. Still we were, most of us, 
so drunk with sleep that it would have taken 
more than that to keep us awake. At three 
we resumed our march, and attacked just at 
dawn. The enemy had abandoned the first- 
line positions, and we met with but little re- 
sistance in the second. Our cavalry, which 
was concentrated at several points in nullahs 
(dry river-beds), suffered at the hands of the 
hostile aircraft. The Turk had evidently de- 
termined to fall back to Tekrit without putting 
up a serious defense. They certainly could 
have given us a much worse time than they 
did, for they had dug in well and scientifically. 
Among the prisoners we took there were some 
that proved to be very worth while. These 
Turkish officers were, as a whole a good lot 
— well dressed and well educated. Many 
spoke French. There is an excellent gunnery 
school at Constantinople, and one of the oflScers 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 47 

we captured had been a senior instructor there 
for many years. We had with us among our 
inteUigence officers a Captain Bettelheim, born 
in Constantinople of Belgian parentage. He 
had served with the Turks against the Italians 
and with the British against the Boers. This 
gunnery officer turned out to be an old com- 
rade of his in the Italian War. Many of the 
officers we got knew him, for he had been 
chief of police in Constantinople. Apparently 
none of them bore him the slightest ill-will 
when they found him serving against them. 

Among the supplies we captured at Daur 
were a lot of our own rifles and ammunition 
that the Arabs had stolen and sold to the Turks. 
It was impossible to entirely stop this, guard 
our dumps as best we could. On dark nights 
they would creep right into camp, and it was 
never safe to have the hospital barges tie up 
to the banks for the night on their way down 
the river. On many occasions the Arabs 
crawled aboard and finished off the wounded. 
There was only one thing to be said for the 
Arab, and that was that he played no favorite, 
but attacked, as a rule, whichever side came 
handier. We were told, and I believe it to 
be true, that during the fighting at Sunnaiyat 



48 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

the Turks sent over to know if we would agree 
to a three days' truce, during which time we 
should join forces against the Arabs, who were 
watching on the flank to pick off stragglers or 
ration convoys. 

That night we bivouacked at Daur, and were 
unmolested except for the enemy aircraft that 
came over and "laid eggs." Next morning we 
advanced on Tekrit. Our orders were to make 
a feint, and if we found that the Turk meant 
to stay and fight it out seriously, we were to 
fall back. Some gazelles got into the no man's 
land between us and the Turk, and in the 
midst of the firing ran gracefully up the line, 
stopping every now and then to stare about 
in amazement. Later on in the Argonne for- 
est in France we had the same thing happen 
with some wild boars. The enemy seemed in 
no way inclined to evacuate Tekrit, so in ac- 
cordance with instructions we returned to our 
previous night's encampment at Daur. On 
the way back we passed an old "arabana," a 
Turkish coupe, standing abandoned in the 
desert, with a couple of dead horses by it. It 
may have been used by some Turkish general 
in the retreat of two days before. It was the 
sort of coupe one associates entirely with well- 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 49 

kept parks and crowded city streets, and the 
incongruity of its lonely isolation amid the 
sand-dunes caused an amused ripple of com- 
ment. 

Our instructions were to march back to 
Samarra early next morning, but shortly be- 
fore midnight orders came through from Gen- 
eral Maude for us to advance again upon 
Tekrit and take it. Next day we halted and 
took stock in view of the new orders. The 
cavalry again suffered at the hands of the 
Turkish aircraft. I went to corps headquarters 
in the afternoon, and a crowd of "red tabs," 
as the staff -officers were called, were seated 
around a little table having the inevitable tea. 
A number of the generals had come in to dis- 
cuss the plan of attack for the following day. 
Suddenly a Turk aeroplane made its appear- 
ance, flying quite low, and dropping bombs 
at regular intervals. It dropped two, and 
then a third on a little hill in a straight line 
from the staff conclave. It looked as if the 
next would be a direct hit, and the staff did 
the only wise thing, and took cover as flat 
on the ground as nature would allow; but the 
Hun's spacing was bad, and the next bomb 
fell some little way beyond. I remember 



50 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

our glee at what we regarded as a capital 
joke on the staff. The line-officer's humor 
becomes a trifle robust where the "gilded 
staff" is concerned, notwithstanding the fact 
that most staff-officers have seen active and 
distinguished service in the line. 

Our anti-aircraft guns — "Archies" we called 
them — were mounted on trucks, and on account 
of their weight had some difficulty getting up. 
I shall not soon forget our delight when they 
lumbered into view, for although I never hap- 
pened personally to see an aeroplane brought 
down by an "Archie," there was no doubt 
about it but that they did not bomb us with 
the same equanimity when our anti-aircrafts 
were at hand. 

That night we marched out on Telvrit, and 
as dawn was breaking were ready to attack. 
As the mist cleared, an alarming but ludicrous 
sight met our eyes. On the extreme right 
some caterpillar tractors hauling our "heavies*' 
were advancing straight on Tekrit, as if they 
had taken themselves for tanks. They were 
not long in discovering their mistake, and 
amid a mixed salvo they clumsily turned and 
made off at their best pace, which was not 
more than three miles an hour. Luckily, they 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 51 

soon got under some excellent defilade, but 
not until they had suffered heavily. 

Our artillery did some good work, but while 
we were waiting to attack we suffered rather 
heavily. We had to advance over a wide 
stretch of open country to reach the Turkish 
first lines. By nightfall the second line of 
trenches was practically all in our hands. 
Meanwhile the cavalry had circled way around 
the flank up-stream of Tekrit to cut the enemy 
off if he attempted to retreat. The town is on 
the right bank of the Tigris, and we had a small 
force that had come up from Samarra on the 
left bank, for we had no means of ferrying 
troops across. Our casualties during the day 
had amounted to about two thousand. The 
Seaforths had suffered heavily, but no more 
so than some of the native regiments. In 
Mesopotamia there were many changes in the 
standing of the Indian battalions. The Ma- 
harattas, for instance, had never previously 
been regarded as anything at all unusual, but 
they have now a very distinguished record to 
take pride in. The general feeling was that 
the Gurkhas did not quite live up to their 
reputation. But the Indian troops as a whole 
did so exceedingly well that there is little 



52 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

purpose in making comparisons amongst them. 
At this time, so I was informed, the Expedi- 
tionary Force, counting all branches, totalled 
about a million, and a very large percentage 
of this came from India. We drew our sup- 
plies from India and Australia, and it is inter- 
esting to note that we preferred the Australian 
canned beef and mutton (bully beef and bully 
mutton, as it was called) to the American. 

At dusk the fighting died down, and we 
were told to hold on and go over at daybreak. 
As I was making my way back to headquarters 
a general pounced upon me and told me to get 
quickly into a car and go as rapidly as 
possible to Daur to bring up a motor ration- 
convoy with fodder for the cavalry horses 
and food for the riders. A Ford car happened 
to pass by, and he stopped it and shoved me 
in, with some last hurried injunction. It was 
quite fifteen miles back, and the country was 
so cut up by nullahs or ravines that in most 
places it was inadvisable to leave the road, 
which was, of course, jammed with a double 
stream of transport of every description. 
When we were three or four miles from Daur 
a tire blew out. The driver had used his last 
spare, so there was nothing to do but keep 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 53 

going on the rim. The car was of the deliv- 
ery-wagon type — "pill-boxes" were what they 
were known as — and while we were stopped 
taking stock I happened to catch sight of a 
good-sized bedding-roll behind. "Some one's 
out of hick," said I to the driver; "whose roll 
is it.f^" "The corps commander's, sir," was 
his reply. After exhausting my limited vo- 
cabulary, I realized that it was far too late to 
stop another motor and send this one back, so 
I just kept going. Across the bed of one more 
ravine, the sand up to the hubs, and we were 
in the Daur camp. I managed to rank some 
one out of a spare tire and started back again. 
My driver proved unable to drive at night, 
at all events at a pace that would put us any- 
where before dawn, so I was forced to take 
the wheel. By the time I had the convoy 
properly located I was rather despondent of 
the corps commander's temper, even should I 
eventually reach him that night, which seemed 
a remote chance, for the best any one could do 
was give me the rough location on a map. 
Still, taking my luminous compass, I set out to 
steer a cross-country course. I ran into five 
or six small groups of ambulances filled with 
wounded, trying to find their way to Daur, 



54 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

and completely lost. Most had given up — 
some were unknowingly headed back for 
Tekrit. I could do no more than give them 
the right direction, which I knew they had no 
chance of holding. Of course I could have no 
headlights, and the ditches were many, but 
in some miraculous way, more through good 
luck than good management, I did find corps 
headquarters, and what was better still, the 
general's reprimand took the form of bread and 
ham and a stiff peg of whiskey — the first food 
I had had since before daylight. 

During the night the Turks evacuated the 
town. Their forces were certainly mobile. 
They could cover the most surprising distances, 
and live on almost nothing. We marched in 
and occupied. White flags were flying from 
all the houses, which were not nearly so much 
damaged from the bombardment as one would 
have supposed. This was invariably the case; 
indeed, it is surprising to see how much shelling 
a town can undergo without noticeable effect. 
It takes a long time to level a town in the way 
it has been done in northern France. In this ^ 
region the banks of the river average about one 
hundred and fifty feet in height, and Tekrit is 
built at the junction of two ravines. No two 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 55 

streets are on the same level; sometimes the 
roofs of the houses on a lower level serve as 
the streets for the houses above. Many of the 
booths in the bazaar were open and transact- 
ing business when we arrived, an excellent 
proof of how firmly the Arabs believed in Brit- 
ish fair dealing. Our men bought cigarettes, 
matches, and vegetables. Yusuf had lived 
here three or four years, so I despatched him 
to get chickens and eggs for the mess. I ran 
into Marshall, who was on his w^ay to dine 
with the mayor, who had turned out to be an 
old friend of his. He asked me to join him, 
and we climbed up to a very comfortable 
house, built around a large courtyard. It was 
the best meal we had either of us had in days 
— great pilaus of rice, excellent chicken, and 
fresh unleavened bread. This bread looks like 
a very large and thin griddle-cake. The Arab 
uses it as a plate. Eating with your hands is 
at first rather difficult. Before falling to, a ewer 
is brought around to you, and you are sup- 
plied with soap — a servant pours water from 
the ewer over your hands, and then gives you 
a towel. After eating, the same process is 
gone through with. There are certain formah- 
ties that must be regarded — one of them being 



56 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

that you must not eat or drink with your left 
hand. 

In Tekrit we did not find as much in the way 
of suppHes and ammunition as we had hoped. 
The Turk had destroyed the greater part of 
his store. We did find great quantities of 
wood, and in that barren, treeless country it 
was worth a lot. Most of the inhabitants of 
Tekrit are raftsmen by profession. Their 
rafts have been made in the same manner 
since before the days of Xerxes and Darius. 
Inflated goatskins are used as a basis for a 
platform of poles, cut in the up-stream forests. 
On these, starting from Diarbekr or Mosul, 
they float down all their goods. When they 
reach Tekrit they leave the poles there, and 
start up-stream on foot, carrying their deflated 
goatskins. The Turks used this method a 
great deal bringing down their supphes. In 
pre-war days the rafts, keleks as they are 
called, would often come straight through to 
Baghdad, but many were always broken up 
at Tekrit, for there is a desert route running 
across to Hit on the Euphrates, and the sup- 
plies from up-river were taken across this in 
camel caravans. 

The aerodrome lay six or seven miles above 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 57 

the town, and I was anxious to see it and the 
comfortable billets the Germans had built 
themselves. I found a friend whose duties 
required motor transportation, and we set off 
in his car. A dust-storm was raging, and we 
had some difficulty in finding our way through 
the network of trenches. Once outside, the 
storm became worse, and we could only see a 
few yards in front of us. We got completely 
lost, and after nearly running over the edge 
of the bluff, gave up the attempt, and slowly 
worked our way back. 

When we started off on the advance I was 
reading Xenophon's Anabasis. On the day 
when we were ordered to march on Tekrit a 
captain of the Royal Flying Corps, an ex- 
master at Eton, was in the mess, and when I 
told him that I was nearly out of reading mat- 
ter, he said that next time he came over he 
would drop me Plutarch's Lives, I asked him 
to drop it at corps headquarters, and that a 
friend of mine there would see that I got it. 
The next day in the heat of the fighting a 
plane came over low, signalling that it was 
dropping a message. As the streamer fell 
close by, there was a rush to pick it up and 
learn how the attack was progressing. Fortu- 



58 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

nately, I was far away when the packet was 
opened and found to contain the book that 
the pilot had promised to drop for me. 

After we had been occupying the town for a 
few days, orders came through to prepare to 
fall back on Samarra. The line of communi- 
cation was so long that it was impossible to 
maintain us, except at too great a cost to the 
transportation facilities possessed by the Ex- 
peditionary Forces. Eight or ten months later, 
when we had more rails in hand, a line was 
laid to Tekrit, which had been abandoned by 
the Turks under the threat of our advance 
to Kirkuk, in the Persian hills. It was diffi- 
cult to explain to the men, particularly to the 
Indians, the necessity for falling back. All 
they could understand was that we had taken 
the town at no small cost, and now we were 
about to give it up. 

For several days I was busy helping to pre- 
pare rafts to take down the timber and such 
other captured supplies as were worth remov- 
ing. The river was low, leaving a broad stretch 
of beach below the town, and to this we brought 
down the poles. Several camels had died near 
the water, probably from the results of our 
shelling, and the hot weather soon made them 



THE TIGRIS FRONT 59 

very unpleasant companions. The first day 
was bad enough; the second was worse. The 
natives were not in the least affected. They 
brought their washing and worked among them 
— they came down and drew their drinking- 
water from the river, either beside the camels 
or down-stream of them, with complete indiffer- 
ence. It is true this water percolates drop by 
drop through large, porous clay pots before it 
is drunk, but even so, it would have seemed 
that they would have preferred its coming from 
up-stream of the derelict "ships of the desert.'* 
On the third day, to their mild surprise, we 
managed with infinite difficulty to tow the 
camels out through the shallow water into the 
main stream. 

We finally got our rafts built, over eighty in 
number, and arranged for enough Arab pilots 
to take care of half of them. On the remain- 
der we put Indian sepoys. They made quite 
a fleet when we finally got them all started 
down-stream. Two were broken up in the 
rapids near Daur, the rest reached Samarra in 
safety on the second day. 

We had a pleasant camp on the bluffs be- 
low Tekrit — high enough above the plain to 
be free of the ordinary dust-storms, and the 



60 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

prospect of returning to Samarra was scarcely 
more pleasant to us than to the men. Five 
days after we had taken the town, we turned 
our backs on it and marched slowly back to 
rail-head. 



Ill 

Patrolling the Ruins of Babylon 



Ill 

PATROLLING THE RUINS OF BABYLON 

We returned to find Samarra buried in dust 
and more desolate than ever. A few days 
later came the first rain-storm. After a night's 
downpour the air was radiantly clear, and it 
was joy to ride off on the rounds, no longer 
like Zeus, enveloped in a cloud. 

It was a relief to see the heat-stroke camps 
broken up. During the summer months our 
ranks were fearfully thinned through the sun. 
Although it was the British troops that suffered 
most, the Indians were by no means immune. 
Before the camps were properly organized the 
percentage of mortality was exceedingly large, 
for the only effective treatment necessitates 
the use of much ice. The patient runs a tem- 
perature which it was impossible to control 
until the ice-making machines were installed. 
The camps were situated in the coolest and 
most comfortable places, but in spite of every- 
thing, death was a frequent result, and recover- 
ies were apt to be only partial. Men who had 

63 



64 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

had a bad stroke were rarely of any further use 
in the country. 

Another sickness of the hot season which 
now began to claim less victims was sand- 
fly fever. This fever, which, as its name indi- 
cates, was contracted from the bites of sand- 
flies, varied widely in virulence. Sometimes 
it was so severe that the victim had to be 
evacuated to India; as a rule he went no 
farther than a base hospital at Baghdad or 
Amara. 

One of the things about which the Tommy 
felt most keenly in the Mesopotamian cam- 
paign was that there was no such thing as a 
*Xushy Bhghty." To take you to "Bhghty" 
a wound must mean permanent disablement, 
otherwise you either convalesced in the coun- 
try or, at best, were sent to India. In the 
same manner there were no short leaves, for 
there was nowhere to go. At the most rapid 
rate of travelling it took two weeks to get to 
India, and once there, although the people 
did everything possible in the way of entertain- 
ing, the enlisted man found little to make him 
less homesick than he had been in Mesopotamia. 
Transportation was so difficult and the trip so 
long that only under very exceptional circum- 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 65 

stances was leave to England given. ^ One 
spring it was announced that officers wishing 
to get either married or divorced could apply 
for leave with good hopes of success. Many 
applied, but a number returned without having 
fulfilled either condition, so that the following 
year no leaves were given upon those grounds. 
The army commander put all divorce cases 
into the hands of an officer whose civil occupa- 
tion had been the law, and who arranged them 
without the necessity of granting home leave. 

A week after our return to Samarra a rumor 
started that General Maude was down with 
cholera. For some time past there had been spo- 
radic cases, though not enough to be counted 
an epidemic. The sepoys had suffered chiefly, 
but not exclusively, for the British ranks also 
supplied a quota of victims. An officer on the 
staff of the military governor of Baghdad had 
recently died. We heard that the army com- 
mander had the virulent form, and knew there 
could be no chance of his recovery. The an- 
nouncement of his death was a heavy blow to 
all, and many were the gloomy forebodings. 
The whole army had implicit confidence in their 
leader, and deeply mourned his loss. The 
usual rumors of foul play and poison went the 



66 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

rounds, but I soon after heard Colonel Wilcox — 
in pre-war days an able and renowned prac- 
titioner of Harley Street — say that it was an 
undoubted case of cholera. The colonel had at- 
tended General Maude throughout the illness. 
The general had never taken the cholera pro- 
phylactic, although Colonel Wilcox had on 
many occasions urged him to do so, the last 
time being only a few days before the disease 
developed. 

General Marshall, who had commanded 
General Maude's old division, the Thirteenth, 
took over. The Seventeenth lost General 
Gillman, who thereupon became chief of staff. 
This was a great loss to his division, for he was 
the idol of the men, but the interest of the 
Expeditionary Force was naturally and justly 
given precedence. 

In due course my transfer to the Motor 
Machine-Gun Corps came through approved, 
and I was assigned to the Fourteenth battery 
of light-armored motor-cars, commanded by 
Captain Nigel Somerset, whose grandfather, 
Lord Raglan, had died, nursed by Florence 
Nightingale, while in command of the British 
forces in the Crimean War. Somerset himself 
was in the infantry at the outbreak of the war 




Ti)\viiiii' ail armored car across a river 




Reconnaissance 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 67 

and had been twice wounded in France. He 
was an excellent leader, possessing as he did 
dash, judgment, and personal magnetism. A 
battery was composed of eight armored cars, 
subdivided into four sections. There was a 
continually varying number of tenders and 
workshop lorries. The fighting cars were Rolls- 
Royces, the others Napiers and Fords. 

At that time there were only four batteries 
in the country. We were army troops — that 
is to say, we were not attached to any individual 
brigade, or division, or corps, but were tem- 
porarily assigned first here and then there, as 
the need arose. 

In attacks we worked in co-operation with 
the cavalry. Although on occasions they tried 
to use us as tanks, it was not successful, for 
our armor-plate was too light. We were also 
employed in raiding, and in quelling Arab up- 
risings. This latter use threw us into close 
touch with the political officers. These were 
a most interesting lot of men. They were re- 
cruited in part from the army, but largely from 
civil life. They took over the civil adminis- 
tration, of the conquered territory and judici- 
ously upheld native justice. Many remarkable 
characters were numbered among them — men 



68 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

who had devoted a Hfetlme to the study of the 
intricacies of Oriental diplomacy. They were 
distinguished by the white tabs on the collars 
of their regulation uniforms; but white was by 
no means invariably the sign of peace, for many 
of the political officers were killed, and more 
than once in isolated towns in unsettled dis- 
tricts they sustained sieges that lasted for 
several days. We often took a political oflScer 
out with us on a raid or reconnaissance, find- 
ing his knowledge of the language and customs 
of great assistance. Sir Percy Cox was at the 
head, with the title "Chief Political Officer" 
and the rank of general. His career in the 
Persian Gulf has been as distinguished as it is 
long, and his handling of the very delicate situa- 
tions arising in Mesopotamia has called forth 
the unstinted praise of soldier and civilian alike. 
Ably assisting him, and head of the Arab 
bureau, was Miss Gertrude Bell, the only 
woman, other than the nursing sisters, officially 
connected with the Mesopotamian Expedition- 
ary Forces. Miss Bell speaks Arabic fluently 
and correctly. She first became interested in 
the East when visiting her uncle at Teheran, 
where he was British minister. She has made 
noteworthy expeditions in Syria and Mesopo- 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 69 

tamia, and has written a number of admirable 
books, among which are Armurath to Armurath 
and The Desert and the Sown. The undeniable 
position which she holds must appear doubly 
remarkable when the Mohammedan official at- 
titude toward women is borne in mind. Miss 
Bell has worked steadily and without a leave 
in this trying climate, and her tact and judg- 
ment have contributed to the British success 
to a degree that can scarcely be overestimated. 

The headquarters of the various batteries 
were in Baghdad. There we had our perma- 
nent billets, and stores. We would often be 
ordered out in sections to be away varying 
lengths of time, though rarely more than a 
couple of months. The workshops' officer 
stayed in permanent charge and had the diffi- 
cult task of keeping all the cars in repair. The 
supply of spare parts was so uncertain that 
much skill and ingenuity were called for, and 
possessed to a full degree by Lieutenant Lin- 
nell of the Fourteenth. 

A few days after I joined I set off with Somer- 
set and one of the battery officers. Lieutenant 
Smith, formerly of the Black Watch. We were 
ordered to do some patrolling near the ruins of 
[Babylon. Kerbela and Nejef, in the quahty 



70 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

of great Shiah shrines, had never been particu- 
larly friendly to the Turks, who were Sunnis — 
but the desert tribes are almost invariably 
Sunnis, and this coupled with their natural 
instinct for raiding and plundering made them 
eager to take advantage of any interregnum 
of authority. We organized a sort of native 
mounted police, but they were more picturesque 
than effective. They were armed with weap- 
ons of varying age and origin — not one was 
more recent than the middle of the last century. 
Now the Budus, the wild desert folk, were fre- 
quently equipped with rifles they had stolen 
from us, so in a contest the odds were anything 
but even. 

W^e took up our quarters at Museyib, a small 
town on the banks of the Euphrates, six or 
eight miles above the Hindiyah Barrage, a dam 
finished a few years before, and designed to 
irrigate a large tract of potentially rich coun- 
try. We patrolled out to Mohamediyah, a 
village on the caravan desert route to Baghdad, 
and thence down to Hilleh, around which stand 
the ruins of ancient Babylon. The rainy sea- 
son was just beginning, and it was obvious that 
the patrolling could not be continuous, for a 
twelve-hour rain would make the country 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 71 

impassable to our heavy cars for two or three 
days. We were fortunate in having pleasant 
company in the officers of a Punjabi infantry 
battalion and an Indian cavalry regiment. 
Having commandeered an ancient caravan- 
serai for garage and billets, we set to work to 
clean it out and make it as waterproof as cir- 
cumstances would permit. An oil-drum with 
a length of iron telegraph-pole stuck in its 
top provided a serviceable stove, and when 
it rained we played bridge or read. 

I was ever ready to reduce my kit to any 
extent in order to have space for some books, 
and Voltaire's Charles XII was the first called 
upon to carry me to another part of the world 
from that in which I at the moment found 
myself. I always kept a volume of some sort 
in my pocket, and during halts I would read in 
the shade cast by the turret of my car. The 
two volumes of Layard's Early Adventures 
proved a great success. The writer, the great 
Assyriologist, is better known as the author of 
Nineveh and Babylon. The book I was reading 
had been written when he was in his early 
twenties, but published for the first time forty 
years later. Layard started life as a solicitor's 
clerk in London, but upon being offered a post 



72 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

in India he had accepted and proceeded 
thither overland. On reaching Baghdad he 
made a side-trip into Kurdistan, and became so 
enamored of the hfe of the tribesmen that he 
Hved there with them on and off for two years 
— ^years filled with adventure of the most thrill- 
ing sort. 

I had finished a translation of Xenophon 
shortly before and found it a very different 
book than when I was plodding drearily 
through it in the original at school. Here it 
was all vivid and real before my eyes, with the 
scene of the great battle of Cunaxa only a few 
miles from Museyib. Babylon was in sight of 
the valiant Greeks, but all through the loss of a 
leader it was never to be theirs. On the ground 
itself one could appreciate how great a master- 
piece the retreat really was, and the hardiness 
of the soldiers which caused Xenophon to re- 
gard as a "snow sickness" the starvation and 
utter weariness which made the numbed men 
lie down and die in the snow of the Anatolian 
highlands. He remarks naively that if you 
could build a fire and give them something hot 
to eat, the sickness was dispelled ! 

The rain continued to fall and the mud be- 
came deeper and deeper. It was all the Arabs 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 73 

could do to get their produce into market. The 
bazaar was not large, but was always thronged. 
I used to sit in one of the coffee-houses and 
drink coffee or tea and smoke the long-stemmed 
water-pipe, the narghile. My Arabic was now 
sufficiently fluent for ordinary conversation, 
and in these clubs of the Arab I could hear 
all the gossip. Bazaar rumors always told of 
our advances long before they were officially 
given out. Once in Baghdad I heard of an 
attack we had launched. On going around 
to G. H. Q. I mentioned the rumor, and found 
that it was not yet known there, but shortly 
after was confirmed. I had already in Africa 
met with the "native wireless," and it will be 
remembered how in the Civil War the planta- 
tion negroes were often the first to get news of 
the battles. It is something that I have never 
heard satisfactorily explained. 

In the coffee-houses, besides smoking and 
gossiping, we also played games, either chess 
or backgammon or munkula. This last is an 
exceedingly primitive and ancient game — it 
must date almost as far back as jackstones or 
knucklebones. I have seen the natives in 
Central Africa and the Indians in the far 
interior of Brazil playing it in almost identical 



74 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

form. In Mesopotamia the board was a log 
of wood sliced in two and hinged together. 
In either half five or six holes were scooped out, 
and the game consisted in dropping cowrie 
shells or pebbles into the holes. When the 
number in a particular hollow came to a cer- 
tain amount with the addition of the one 
dropped in, you won the contents. 

In most places the coffee was served in Arab 
fashion, not Turkish. In the latter case it is 
sweet and thick and the tiny cup is half full 
of grounds; in the former the coffee is clear and 
bitter and of unsurpassable flavor. The di- 
minutive cup is filled several times, but each 
time there is only a mouthful poured in. Tea 
is served in small glasses, without milk, but with 
lots of sugar. The spoons in the glasses are 
pierced with holes like tea-strainers so that the 
tea may be stirred without spilling it. 

There was in particular one booth I could 
never tire watching. The old man who owned 
it was a vender of pickles. In rows before him 
were bottles and jars and bowls containing 
pickles of all colors — red, yellow, green, purple, 
white, and even blue. Above his head were 
festoons of gayly painted peppers. He had a 
long gray beard, wore a green turban and a 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 75 

flowing robe with a gold-braided waistcoat. 
In the half-lights of the crowded, covered ba- 
zaar his was a setting in which Dulac would 
have revelled. 

At Museyib we led a peaceful, uneventful 
existence — completely shut in by the mud. 
We had several bazaar rumors about proposed 
attacks upon the engineers who were survey- 
ing for a railroad that was to be built to Hilleh 
for the purpose of transporting the grain-crop 
to the capital. Nothing materialized, however. 
The conditions were too poor to induce even 
the easily encouraged Arabs to raid. One 
morning when I was wandering around the 
gardens on the outskirts of the town I came 
across some jackals and shot one with my 
Webley revolver. It was running and I fired 
a number of times, and got back to town to 
find that my shooting had started all sorts of 
excitement and reports of uprisings. 

Christmas came and the different officers* 
messes organized celebrations. The mess we 
had joined was largely Scotch, so we decided 
we must make a haggis, that "chieftain of the 
pudden race." The ingredients, save for the 
whiskey, were scarcely orthodox, but if it was 
not a success, at least no one admitted it. 



76 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

As soon as the weather cleared we made a 
run to Kerbela — a lovely town, with miles of 
gardens surrounding it and two great mosques. 
The bazaar was particularly attractive — plenti- 
fully supplied with everything. We got quan- 
tities of the deliciously flavored pistachio-nuts 
which were difficult to obtain elsewhere, as 
well as all sorts of fruit and vegetables. There 
were no troops stationed in the vicinity, so the 
prices were lower than usual. The orders were 
that we should go about in armed bands, but 
I never saw any marked indication of hostility. 
The British, true to the remarkable tact and 
tolerance that contributes so largely to their 
success in dealing with native races, posted Mo- 
hammedan sepoys as guards on the mosques, 
and no one but Moslems could even go into 
the courtyards. If this had not been done, 
there would have been many disturbances 
and uprisings, for the Arabs and Persians 
felt so strongly on the question that they re- 
garded with marked hostility those who even 
gazed into the mosque courtyards. Why it is 
so different in Constantinople I do not know, 
but there was certainly no hostility shown us 
in Santa Sophia nor in the mosque of Omar in 
Jerusalem. Be that as it may, forbidden fruit 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 77 

IS always sweet, and the Tommies were inclined 
to force an entrance. During a change of 
guard a Tommy who had his curiosity and 
initiative stimulated through recourse to arrick, 
the fiery liquor distilled from dates, stole into 
the most holy mosque in Kerbela. By a 
miracle he was got out unharmed, but for a 
few hours a general uprising with an attendant 
massacre of unbelievers was feared. 

The great mosque lost much of its dignity 
through an atrocious clock-tower standing in 
the courtyard in front of it. It had evidently 
been found too expensive to cover this tower 
with a golden scale to shine in the sun, so some 
ingenious architect hit upon the plan of paper- 
ing it with flattened kerosene-tins. It must 
have glinted gloriously at first, but weather and 
rain had rusted the cans and they presented but 
a sorry spectacle. From the thousand and one 
uses to which these oil-cans have been put by 
the native, one is inclined to think that the 
greatest benefit that has been conferred on the 
natives by modern civilization is from the hands 
of the Standard Oil Company. 

There were a fair number of Indians living in 
Kerbela before the war, for devout Shiahs are 
anxious to be buried near the martyred sons of 



78 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

Ali, and when they are unable to move to Ker- 
bela in their hfetime they frequently make 
provisions that their remains may- be trans- 
ported thither. The British found it a con- 
venient abode for native rulers whom they 
were forced to depose but still continued to 
pension. 

Hilleh, which stands near the ruins of ancient 
Babylon, is a modern town very much like 
Museyib. I never had a chance to study the 
ruins at any length. Several times we went 
over the part that had been excavated by the 
Germans immediately before the war. I under- 
stand that this is believed to be the great palace 
where Belshazzar saw the handwriting on the 
wall. It is built of bricks, each one of which 
is stamped in cuneiform characters. There are 
very fine bas-reliefs of animals, both mythical 
and real. In the centre is the great stone lion, 
massively impressive, standing over the pros- 
trate form of a man. The lion has suffered 
from fire and man; there have even been 
chips made in it recently by Arab rifles, prob- 
ably not wantonly, but in some skirmish. 
Standing alone in its majesty in the midst of 
ruin and desolation amid the black tents of 
a people totally unable to construct or even 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 79 

appreciate anything of a like nature, it gave 
one much to think over and moraHze about. 
The ruins of Babylon have been excavated 
only in very small part; there are great iso- 
lated mounds which have never been touched, 
and you can still pick up in the sand bits of 
statuary, and the cylinders that were used as 
seal-rings. The great city of Seleucia on the 
Tigris was built largely with bricks and ma- 
sonry brought by barge from the ruins of Baby- 
lon through the canal that joined the two rivers. 
The prophecy of Isaiah has fallen true: 

And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of 
the Chaldees* excellency, shall be as when God over- 
threw Sodom and Gomorrah. 

It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt 
in from generation to generation: neither shall the Ara- 
bian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make 
their fold there. 

But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their 
houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall 
dwell there, and satyrs shall dance there. 

And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their 
desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: 
and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be 
prolonged. 

A few days after Christmas we were ordered 
to return to Baghdad. The going was still 



80 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

bad. We had a Ford tender in advance to 
find and warn us of the softest spots. Once 
it got into the middle of such a bottomless bog 
that, after trying everything else, I hit upon the 
idea of rolling it out. It was built all enclosed 
like a bread-van, and we turned it over and 
over until we had it clear of the mud. We 
had hard work with the heavy cars — some- 
times we could tow one out with another, 
but frequently that only resulted in getting the 
two stuck. Once when the cars were badly 
bogged I went to a near-by Arab village to get 
help. I told the head man that I wanted bun- 
dles of brush to throw in front of the cars in 
order to make some sort of a foundation to 
pass them over. He at once started turning 
out his people to aid us, but after he had got 
a number of loads under way he caught sight of 
one of his wives, who, instead of coming to 
our assistance, was washing some clothes in a 
copper caldron by the fire. There followed a 
scene which demonstrated that even an Arab 
is by no means always lord of his own house- 
hold. The wife refused to budge; the Arab 
railed and stormed, but she went calmly on 
with her washing, paying no more attention to 
his fury than if he were a fractious, unreasona- 



THE RUINS OF BABYLON 81 

ble child. At length, driven to a white heat of 
rage, the head man upset the caldron into the 
fire with his foot. The woman, without a word, 
got up and stalked into a near-by hut, from 
which she refused to emerge. There was noth- 
ing for her discomfited adversary to do but go 
on with his rounds. 

By manoeuvring and digging and towing we 
managed to make seven -miles after fourteen 
hours' work that first day. Night found us 
close beside an Arab village, from which I got 
a great bowl of buffalo milk to put into the 
men's coffee. Early in the morning we were 
off again. The going was so much better that 
we were able to make Baghdad at ten o'clock 
in the evening. 



IV 

Skirmishes and Reconnaissances Along 
the Kurdish Front 



IV 



SKIRMISHES AND RECONNAISSANCES 
ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 

We spent a few days making repairs and 
outfitting before starting off again. This time 
our destination was Deli Abbas, the head- 
quarters of the Thirteenth Division. The 
town is situated in the plains below the foot- 
hills of the Persian Mountains, on the banks 
of the Khalis Canal, some seventy miles north- 
east of Baghdad. At dawn we passed out of 
the north gate, close to where General Maude 
is buried, and whirled across the desert for 
thirty miles to Bakuba, a prosperous city on 
the banks of the Diyala. From the junction 
of the greater Zab down to Kurna, where the 
Euphrates joins, this stream is the most im- 
portant affluent of the Tigris. It was one of 
those bright, sparkling mornings on which 
merely to be alive and breathe is a joy. We 
passed a number of caravans, bringing carpets 
and rugs from Persia, or fruit and vegetables 
from the rich agricultural district around 

85 



86 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

Bakuba. The silks manufactured here are of 
a fine quality and well known throughout the 
country. 

After passing the big aerodrome near the 
town, the going became very bad; we struggled 
along through the village of Deltawa, in and 
out of unfathomable ditches. The rivers were 
in flood, and we ran into lakes and swamps 
that we cautiously skirted. Dark overtook 
us in the middle of a network of bogs, but we 
came upon an outpost of Welsh Fusiliers and 
spent the night with them. We had smashed 
the bottom plate of one of the cars, so that all 
the oil ran out of the crank-case, but with a 
side of the ever-useful kerosene tin we patched 
the car up temporarily and pushed off at early 
dawn. Our route wound through groves of 
palms surrounding the tumble-down tomb of 
some holy man, occasional collections of squahd 
little huts, and in the intervening "despoblado" 
we would catch sight of a jackal crouching in 
the hollow or slinking off through the scrub. 
Deli Abbas proved a half-deserted straggling 
town which gave evidence of having once seen 
prosperous days. Some Turkish aeroplanes 
heralded our arrival. 

In front of us rose the Jebel Hamrin — Red 



ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 87 

Hills — beyond them the snow-clad peaks of 
the Kurdish Range. A few months previous 
we had captured the passes over the Jebel, and 
we were now busy repairing and improving 
the roads — in particular that across the Abu 
Hajjar, not for nothing named by the Arabs 
the "Father of Stones." Whenever the going 
permitted we w^ent out on reconnaissances — 
rekkos, as we called them. They varied but 
slightly; the one I went on the day after 
reaching Deli Abbas might serve as model. 
We started at daybreak and ran to a little 
village called Ain Lailah, the Spring of Night, 
a lovely name for the small clump of palm- 
trees tucked away unexpectedly in a hollow 
among barren foot-hills. There we picked up 
a surveyor — an officer whose business it was to 
make maps for the army. We passed through 
great herds of camels, some with small chil- 
dren perched on their backs, who joggled about 
like sailors on a storm-tossed ship, as the 
camels made away from the cars. There were 
villages of the shapeless black tents of the 
nomads huddled in among the desolate dunes. 
We picked up a Turk deserter who was try- 
ing to reach our lines. He said that his six 
comrades had been killed by Arabs. Shortly 



88 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

afterward we ran into a cavalry patrol, but 
the men escaped over some very broken ground 
before we could satisfactorily come to terms 
with them. It was lucky for the deserter that 
we found him before they did, for his shrift 
would have been short. We got back to camp 
at half past eight, having covered ninety-two 
miles in our windings — a good day's work. 

Each section had two motorcycles attached to 
it — jackals, as one of the generals called them, 
in apt reference to the way in which jackals ac- 
company a lion when hunting. The cyclists 
rode ahead to spy out the country and the best 
course to follow. When we got into action they 
would drop behind, and we used them to send 
messages back to camp. The best motor- 
cyclist we had was a Swiss named Milson. He 
was of part English descent, and came at once 
from Switzerland at the outbreak of the war to 
enlist. When he joined he spoke only broken 
English but was an exceedingly intelligent 
man and had been attending a technical col- 
lege. I have never seen a more skilful rider; 
he could get his cycle along through the mud 
when we were forced to carry the others, and 
no one was more cool and unconcerned under 
fire. The personnel of the battery left nothing 



ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 89 

to be desired. One was proud to serve among 
such a fine set of men. Corporal Summers 
drove the car in which I usually rode, and 
I have never met with a better driver or one 
who understood his car so thoroughly, and 
possessed that intangible sympathy with it 
which is the gift of a few, but can be never 
attained. 

We were still in the rainy season. We had 
to travel as light as possible, and all we could 
bring were forty-pounder tents, which corre- 
spond to the American dog-tent. Very low, 
they withstood in remarkable fashion the 
periodical hurricanes of wind and rain. They 
kept us fairly dry, too, for we were careful to 
ditch them well. There was room for two men 
to sleep in the turret of a Rolls, and they 
could spread a tarpaulin over the top to keep 
the rain from coming in through the various 
openings. The balance of the men had a com- 
munal tent or slept in the tenders. The 
larger tents in the near-by camps blew down 
frequently, but with us it happened only occa- 
sionally. There are happier moments than 
those spent in the inky blackness amid a tor- 
rential deluge, when you try to extricate your- 
self from the wet, clinging folds of falling canvas. 



90 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

Time hung heavily when the weather was 
bad, and we were cooped up inside our tents 
without even a hostile aeroplane to shoot at. 
One day when the going was too poor to take 
out the heavy cars, I set off in a tender to 
visit another section of the battery that was 
stationed thirty or forty miles away in the 
direction of Persia, close by a town called Kizil 
Robat. We had a rough trip, with several 
difficult fords to cross. It was only through 
working with the icy water above our waists 
that we won through the worst, amid the 
shouts of "Shabash, Sahib!" ("Well done!") 
from the onlooking Indian troops. I reached 
the camp to find the section absent on a recon- 
naissance, for the country was better drained 
than that over which we were working. A few 
minutes later one of the cyclists came in with 
the news that the cars were under heavy fire 
about twenty -five miles away and one of them 
was badly bogged. I immediately loaded all 
the surplus men and eight Punjabis from a 
near-by regiment into the tenders. We reached 
the scene just after the disabled car had been 
abandoned. Some of the Turks were con- 
cealed in a village two hundred and fifty yards 
away; the rest were behind some high irriga- 



ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 91 

tion embankments. The free car had been 
unable to circle around or flank them because 
of the nature of the terrain. The men had not 
known that the village was occupied and had 
bogged down almost at the same time that the 
Turks opened fire. By breaking down an irri- 
gation ditch the enemy succeeded in further 
flooding the locality where the automobile was 
trapped. The Turks made it hot for the men 
when they tried to dig out the car. The bullets 
spattered about them. It was difficult to tell 
how many Turks we accounted for. As dark 
came on, the occupants of the disabled car 
abandoned it and joined the other one, which 
was standing off the enemy but had lost all four 
tires and was running on its rims. We held a 
consultation and decided to stay where we were 
until dawn. We had scarcely made the deci- 
sion when one of our cyclists arrived with orders 
from the brigade commander to return imme- 
diately. Although exceedingly loath to leave 
the armored car, we had no other course than 
to obey. 

It was after midnight by the time we made 
back to camp. We were told that a small 
attack had been planned for the morning, and 
that then we could go out with the troops and 



92 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

recover our car, using some artillery horses 
to drag it free. The troops soon began filing 
past, but we didn't pull out till three o'clock, 
by which time we were reinforced by an armored 
car from another battery. We were held back 
behind the advanced cavalry until daylight, 
and felt certain that the Turks would have 
either destroyed or succeeded in removing our 
car. Nor were we wrong, for just as we breasted 
the hill that brought the scene of yesterday's 
engagement into view, we saw the smoke of an 
explosion and the men running back into the 
village. We cleared the village with the help 
of a squadron of the Twenty-First cavalry, 
and found that the car had been almost freed 
during the night. It was a bad wreck, but we 
were able to tow it. I wished to have a reckon- 
ing with the village head man, and walked to 
an isolated group of houses a few hundred yards 
to the left of the village. As I neared them a 
lively fusillade opened and I had to take 
refuge in a convenient irrigation ditch. The 
country was so broken that it was impossible 
for us to operate, so we towed the car back to 
camp. 

Our section from Deli Abbas was moved up 
to take the place of the one that had been en- 




Hauling out a badly bogged fighting car 




A Mesopotaniian garage 



ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 93 

gaged, which now returned to Baghdad. We 
were camped at Mirjana, a few miles north 
of Kizil Robat, on the Diyala River. A pon- 
toon bridge was thrown across and the cars 
were taken over to the right bank, where we 
bivouacked with a machine-gun company and a 
battahon of native infantry. The bed of the 
river was very wide, and although throughout 
the greater part of the year the water flowed 
only through the narrow main channel, in the 
time of the spring floods the whole distance 
was a riotous yellow torrent. We had no sooner 
got the cars across than the river began to rise. 
During the first night part of the bridge was 
carried away, and the rest was withdrawn. 
The rise continued; trees and brush were swept 
racing past. We made several fruitless at- 
tempts to get across in the clumsy pontoons, 
but finally gave it up, resigning ourselves to 
being marooned. We put ourselves on short 
rations and waited for the river to fall. If 
the Turks had used any intelligence they could 
have gathered us in with the greatest ease, in 
spite of our excellent line of trenches. On the 
fourth day of our isolation the river subsided as 
rapidly as it had risen. 

We had good patrolling conditions, and each 



94 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

day we made long circuits. Sometimes we 
would run into a body of enemy cavalry and 
have a skirmish with them. Again we would 
come upon an infantry outpost and manoeuvre 
about in an effort to damage it. The enemy 
set traps for us, digging big holes in the road 
and covering them over with matting on which 
they scattered dirt to make the surface appear 
normal. The nearest town occupied by the 
Turks was Kara Tepe, distant from Mir j ana 
eight or ten miles as the crow flies. In the de- 
batable land were a number of native villages, 
and such inhabitants as remained in them led 
an unpleasantly eventful existence. In the 
morning they would be visited by a Turkish 
patrol, which would be displaced by us in our 
rounds. Perhaps in the evening a band of 
wild mountainy Kurds would blow in and run 
off some of their few remaining sheep. Then 
the Turks would return and accuse them of hav- 
ing given us information, and carry off some 
hostages or possibly beat a couple of them for 
having received us, although goodness knows 
they had little enough choice in the matter. 
There was one old sheik with whom I used 
often to sit and gossip while an attendant was 
roasting the berries for our coffee over the near- 



ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 95 

by fire. He was ever asking why we couldn't 
make an advance and put his village safely be- 
hind our Hues, so that the children could grow 
fat and the herds graze unharmed. In this 
country Kurdish and Turkish were spoken as 
frequently as Arabic, and many of the names of 
places were Turkish — such as Kara Tepe, 
which means Black Mountain, and Kizil Robat, 
the Tomb of the Maidens. My spelling of 
these names differs from that found on many 
maps. It would be a great convenience if some 
common method could be agreed upon. At 
present the map-makers conform only in a 
unanimous desire to each use a different trans- 
literation. 

Kizil Robat is an attractive town. I spent 
some pleasant mornings wandering about it 
with the mayor, Jameel Bey, a fine-looking 
Kurdish chieftain of the Jaf tribe. He owned 
a lovely garden with date-palms, oranges, 
pomegranates, and figs. Tattered Kurds were 
working on the irrigation ditches, and a heap of 
rags lying below the wall in the sun changed 
itself into a small boy, just as I was about to 
step on it. Jameel's son was as white, with 
as rosy cheeks, as any American baby. 

Harry Bo wen, brother-in-law of General 



96 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

Cobbe, was the political oflScer in charge of 
Ejzil Robat. He spoke excellent Arabic and 
was much respected by the natives. His 
house was an oasis in which I could always look 
forward to a pleasant talk, an excellent native 
dinner, and some interesting book to carry off. 
Although the town was small, there were three 
good Turkish baths. One of them belonged to 
Jameel Bey, but, judging from the children 
tending babies while squatting in the entrance 
portico, was generally given over to the distaff 
side and its friends. The one which we pat-j 
ronized, while not so grand a building, had an 
old Persian who understood the art of massage 
thoroughly, and there was nothing more rest-! 
ful after a number of days' hard work with 
the cars. 

In the end of February there passed through 
Kizil Robat the last contingent of our former 
Russian AUies. They were Cossacks — a fine- 
looking lot as they rode along perched on their 
small chunky saddles atop of their unkempt but 
hardy ponies. WTien Russia went out of the 
war they asked permission to keep on fighting 
with us. They were a good deal of a problem, 
for they had no idea whatever of discipline, 
and it was most difficult to keep them in hand 



ALONG THE KURDISH FRONT 97 

and stop them from pillaging the natives in- 
discriminately. They had been completely 
cut off from Russia for a long time but were 
now on their way back. A very intelligent 
woman doctor and a number of nurses who had 
been with them were sick with smallpox in one 
of our hospitals in Baghdad. When they re- 
covered they were sent to India, for it was not 
feasible to repatriate them by way of Persia. 
When the Russians first estabhshed connection 
with us, some armored cars were sent to bring in 
the Cossack general, whose name we were told 
was Leslie. We were unprepared to find that 
he spoke no English ! It turned out that his 
ancestors had gone over from Scotland to the 
court of Peter the Great. 



V 

The Advance on the Euphrates 



THE ADVANCE ON THE EUPHRATES 

Early in March we got orders to return to 
Baghdad, where all the armored cars were to 
be concentrated preparatory to an attack on 
the Euphrates front. There was much specu- 
lation as to our mission. Some said that we 
were to break through and estabhsh connection 
with General Allenby's forces in Palestine. 
While I know nothing about it authoritatively, 
it is certain that if the state of affairs in France 
had not called for the withdrawal from the East 
of all the troops that could be spared, the at- 
tack that was launched in October would have 
taken place in March. We could then have 
advanced up the Euphrates, and it would have 
been entirely practical to cross over the desert 
in the cars by way of Tadmor. 

When we got word to come in, the roads were 
in fearful shape and the rain was f alhng in tor- 
rents, but we were so afraid that we might miss 
the attack that we salvaged everything not 
essential and started to fight our way through 

101 



102 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

the mud. It was a slow and wearisome proc- 
ess, but we managed to get as far as Bakuba 
by evening. The river was rising in one of its 
periodical floods and we found that the pon- 
toon bridge had been cut half an hour before our 
arrival. No one could predict how long the 
flood would last, but the river rarely went down 
sufficiently to allow the bridge to be replaced 
within a week. At that time the raihoad went 
only as far as Bakuba, and crossed the river 
on a wooden trestle, so I decided to try to load 
the motors on a flat car and get across the 
Diyala in that way. 

After having made arrangements to do this 
I wandered off into the bazaar to get some- 
thing to eat. In native fashion I first bought 
a big flap of bread from an old woman, and then 
went to a pickle booth to get some beets, which 
I wrapped in my bread. Next I proceeded to 
a meat-shop and ordered some lamb kababs 
roasted. The meat is cut in pellets, spitted 
on rods six or eight inches long, and lain over 
the glowing charcoal embers. In the shop 
there are long tables with benches beside them. 
The customer spreads his former purchases, 
and when his kababs are ready he eats his 
dinner. He next proceeds to a coffee-house, 



ON THE EUPHRATES 103 

where he has a couple of glasses of tea and 
three or four diminutive cups of coffee to top 
off, and the meal is finished. The Arab eats 
sparingly as a rule, but when he gives or at- 
tends a banquet he stuffs himself to his ut- 
most capacity. 

Next morning we loaded our cars successfully 
and started off by rail for Baghdad, some thirty 
miles away. The railroad wound across the 
desert, with here and there a water-tank with 
a company from a native regiment guarding 
it. As we stopped at one particularly desolate 
spot, a young officer came running up and asked 
if we would have tea with him. He took us 
to his tent, where everything was ready, for 
he apparently always met the two trains that 
passed through daily. Poor fellow, he was only 
a little over twenty, and desperately lonely and 
homesick. Many of the young officers who 
were wounded in France were sent to India 
with the idea that they could be training men 
and getting on to the methods of the Indian 
army while yet recuperating and unfit to go 
back to the front. They were shipped out with 
a new draft when they had fully recovered. 
This boy had only been a month in the coun- 
try, and ten days before had been sent off in 



104 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

charge of his Sikh company to do this weari- 
some guard duty. 

We spent a few days in Baghdad refitting. 
The cars were to go out camouflaged to resem- 
ble supply-trucks, for every precaution was 
taken to prevent the Turks from realizing that 
we were massing men for an attack. The 
night before we were to start, word came in 
that the political officer at Nejef had been 
murdered, and the town was in revolt. We 
were ordered to send a section there immedi- 
ately, so Lieutenant Ballingal's was chosen, 
while the rest of us left next morning with the 
balance of the battery for Hit. The first part 
of the route lay across the desert to Falujah, a 
prosperous agricultural town on the Euphrates. 
Rail-head lies just beyond at a place known as 
Tel El Dhubban— the "Hill of the Fhes." 
From there on supplies were brought forward 
by motor transport, or in Arab barges, called 
shakturs. We crossed the river on a bridge 
of boats and continued up along the bank to 
Ramadie. Here I stayed over, detailed to 
escort the army commander on a tour of inspec- 
tion. 

The smaller towns along the Euphrates are 
far more attractive than those on the Tigris. 



ON THE EUPHRATES 105 

The country seems more developed, and most 
inviting gardens surround the villages. Hit, 
which lies twenty miles up-stream of Ramadie, 
is an exception. It is of ancient origin and 
built upon a hill, with a lovely view of the river. 
It has not a vestige of green on it, but stands 
out bleak and harsh in contrast to the palm- 
groves fringing the bank. The bitumen wells 
near by have been worked for five thousand 
years and are responsible for the town being a 
centre of boat manufacture. With the bitu- 
men, the gufas and mahelas are "pitched with- 
out and within," in the identical manner in 
which we are told that the ark was built. The 
jars in which the women of the town draw wa- 
ter from the river, instead of being of copper or 
earthenware as elsewhere, are here made of 
pitched wicker-work. The smell of the boiling 
bitumen and the sulphur springs is trying to 
a stranger, although the natives regard it as 
salubrious, and maintain that through it the 
town is saved from cholera epidemics. We 
had captured Hit a few weeks previously, and 
the aeroplanes flying low over the town had 
reported the disagreeable smell, attributing it 
to dirt and filth. "Eyewitness," the official 
newspaper correspondent, mentioned this in 



106 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

despatches, and when I was passing through, a 
proclamation of apology was being prepared 
to soothe the outraged and slandered townsfolk. 
After taking the army commander back to 
rail-head, we retraced our steps with all speed 
to Hit, and thence the eight miles up-stream 
to Salahiyeh. The road beyond Hit was in 
fearful shape, and the engineers were working 
night and day to keep it open and in some way 
passable. In the proposed attack we were 
to jump off from Salahiyeh, and? it was here 
that the armored cars were assembled. Our 
camp was close to a Turkish hospital. There 
were two great crescents and stars laid out for 
a signal to warn our aeroplanes not] to drop 
bombs. One of the crescents was made of turf 
and the other of limestone. The batteries 
took turns in making the reconnaissances, 
in the course of which they would come in for 
a good deal of shelling. The road was un- 
pleasant, because the camels and transport 
animals that had been killed during the 
Turkish retreat from Hit were by now very 
high. For some unknown reason there were 
no jackals or vultures to form a sanitary sec- 
tion. After reconnoitring the enemy positions 
and noting the progress they were making in 



ON THE EUPHRATES 107 

constructing their defenses, we would make a 
long circuit back to camp. 

One unoccupied morning I went over to an 
island on the river. Its cool, restful look had 
attracted me on the day I arrived, and it quite 
fulfilled its promise. Indeed, it was the only 
place I came across in Mesopotamia that 
might have been a surviving fragment of the 
Garden of Eden. It was nearly a mile long, 
and scattered about on it were seven or eight 
thick-walled and well-fortified houses. The 
entire island was one great palm-grove, with 
pomegranates, apricots, figs, orange-trees, and 
grape- vines growing beneath the palms. The 
grass at the foot of the trees was dotted with 
blue and pink flowers. Here and there were 
fields of spring wheat. The water-ditches 
which irrigated the island were filled by giant 
water-wheels, thirty to fifty feet in diameter. 
These "naurs" have been well described in the 
Bible, and I doubt if they have since been modi- 
fied in a single item. There are sometimes as 
many as sixteen in a row. As they scoop the 
water up in the gourd-shaped earthenware jars 
bound to their rims, they shiiek and groan 
on their giant wooden axles. 

On the night of March 25 we got word 



108 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

that the long-expected attack would take 
place next morning. We had the cars ready 
to move out by three. Since midnight shad- 
owy files had been passing on their way for- 
ward to get into position. One of our bat- 
teries went with the infantry to advance against 
the main fortified position at Khan Baghdadi. 
The rest of us went with the cavalry around the 
flank to cut the Turks ojff if they tried to re- 
treat up-stream. We were well on our way at 
daybreak. The country was so broken up 
with ravines and dry river-beds that we knew 
we had a long, hard march ahead of us. Our 
maps were poor. A German officer that we 
captured had in some manner got hold of our 
latest map, and noting that we had omitted 
entirely a very large ravine, became convinced 
that any enveloping movement we attempted 
would prove a failure. As it happened, we 
came close to making the blunder he had an- 
ticipated, for we started to advance down to the 
river along the bank of a nullah which would 
have taken us to Khan Baghdadi instead of 
eight or ten miles above it, as we wished. I 
think it was our aeroplanes that set us straight. 
I was in charge of the tenders with supplies 
and spares, and spent most of the time in the 



ON THE EUPHRATES 109 

leading Napier lorry. Occasionally I slipped 
into an armored car to go off somewhere on a 
separate mission. The Turks had doubtless 
anticipated a flanking movement and kept 
shelling us to a certain extent, but we could hear 
that they were occupying themselves chiefly 
with the straight attacking force. By after- 
noon we had turned in toward the river and 
our cavalry was soon engaged. The country 
was too broken for the cars to get in any really 
effective work. By nightfall we hoped we 
were approximately where we should be, and 
after making our dispositions as well as the 
circumstances would permit, we lay down 
beside the cars and were soon sound asleep. 
At midnight we were awakened by the bullets 
chipping the rocks and stones among which we 
were sleeping. A night attack was evidently 
under way, and it is always an eerie sensation. 
We correctly surmised that the Turks were in 
retreat from Khan Baghdadi and had run into 
our outposts. In a few minutes we were reply- 
ing in volume, and the rat-tat-tats of the 
machine-guns on either side were continuous. 
The enemy must have greatly overestimated 
our numbers, for in a short time small groups 
started surrendering, and before things had 



110 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

quieted we had twelve hundred prisoners. 
The cavalry formed a rough prison-camp and 
we turned in again to wait for daylight. 

At dawn we started to reconnoitre our posi- 
tion to find out just how matters stood. We 
came upon a body of two thousand of the 
enemy which had been held up by us in the 
night and had retreated a short distance to 
wait till it became light before surrendering. 
Among them were a number of German ofiicers. 
They were all of them well equipped with 
machine-guns and rifles. Their intrenching 
tools and medical suppKes were of Austrian 
manufacture, as were also the rolling kitchens. 
These last were of an exceedingly practical 
design. While we were taking stock of our 
capture we got word that Khan Baghdadi had 
been occupied and a good number of prisoners 
taken. We were instructed to press on and 
take Haditha, thirty miles above Klian Bagh- 
dadi. It was hoped that we might recapture 
Colonel Tennant, who was in command of the 
Royal Flying Corps forces in Mesopotamia. 
He had been shot down at Khan Baghdadi 
the day before the attack. We learned from 
prisoners that he had been sent up-stream 
immediately, on his way to Aleppo, but it 



ON THE EUPHRATES 111 

was thought that he might have been held 
over at Haditha or at Ana. 

We found that a lot of the enemy had got 
by between us and the river and had then 
swung back into the road. We met with little 
opposition, save from occasional bands of strag- 
glers who concealed themselves behind rocks 
and sniped at us. Numbers surrendered with- 
out resistance as we caught up with them. We 
disarmed them and ordered them to walk back 
until they fell in with our cavalry, or the in- 
fantry, which was being brought forward in 
trucks. As we bowled along in pursuit the 
scene reminded me of descriptions in the novels 
of Sienkiewicz or Erckmann-Chatrian. The 
road was littered with equipment of every 
sort, disabled pack-animals, and dead or dying 
Turks. It was hard to see the wounded wither- 
ing in the increasing heat — the dead were better 
off. We reached the heights overlooking Hadi- 
tha to find that the garrison was in full retreat. 
Most of it had left the night before. Those 
remaining opened fire upon us, but in a half- 
hearted way, that was not calculated to in- 
flict much loss. Many of the inhabitants of 
the town lived in burrows in the hillsides. 
Some of these caves had been filled with am- 



112 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

munition. The enemy had fired all their 
dumps, and rocks were flying about. We en- 
deavored to save as much of the material as 
was possible. We were particularly anxious to 
get all papers dealing with the Arabs, to enable 
us to check up w^hich were our friends and which 
of the ones behind our lines were dealing treach- 
erously with us. We recaptured a lot of med- 
ical equipment and some ammunition that 
had been taken from our forces during the 
Gallipoli campaign. 

Haditha is thirty-five miles from Khan Bagh- 
dadi, and Ana is an equal distance beyond. 
It was decided that we should push on to a 
big bridge shown on the map as eight miles 
this side of Ana. We were to endeavor to 
secure this before the Turks could destroy it, 
and cross over to bivouac on the far side. The 
road was in fair shape. Many of the small 
bridges were of recent construction. We soon 
found that our map was exceedingly inaccurate. 
Our aeroplanes were doing a lot of damage to 
the fleeing Turks, and as we began to catch up 
with larger groups we had some sharp engage- 
ments. The desert Arabs hovered like vultures 
in the distance waiting for nightfall to cover 
them in their looting. 



ON THE EUPHRATES 113 

That night we camped near the bridge. At 
dusk the Red Cross ambulances and some 
cavalry caught up. The latter had had a long, 
hard two days, with little to eat for the men 
and less for the horses, but both were standing 
up wonderfully. They were the Seventh Hus- 
sars and just as they reached us we recaptured 
one of their sergeants who had been made 
prisoner on the previous night. He had cov- 
ered forty miles on foot, but the Turks had 
treated him decently and he had come through 
in good shape. We always felt that the Turk 
was a clean fighter. Our officers he treated 
well as long as he had anything to give or share 
with them. With the enlisted men he was not 
so considerate, but I am inclined to think that 
it was because he was not accustomed to bother 
his head much about his own rank and file, so 
it never occurred to him to consider ours. 
The Turkish private would thrive on what was 
starvation issue to our men. The attitude of 
many of the Turkish officers was amusing, if ex- 
asperating. They seemed to take it for granted 
that they would be treated with every consid- 
eration due an honored guest. They would 
complain bitterly about not being supplied 
with coffee, although at the time we might be 



114 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

totally without it ourselves and far from any 
source of supply. The German prisoners were 
apt to cringe at first, but as soon as they found 
they were not to be oppressed became arrogant 
and overbearing. At different times we re- 
took men that had been captives for varying 
lengths of time. I remember a Tommy, from 
the Manchesters, if I am not mistaken, who 
had been taken before Kut fell, but had soon 
after made his escape and lived among the 
Kurdish tribesmen for seven or eight months 
before he found his way back to us. Quite a 
number of Indians who had been set to work 
on the construction of the Berlin-to-Baghdad 
Railway between Nisibin and ^losul made 
good their escape and struggled through to 
our lines. 

It was a great rehef when the Red Cross 
lorries came in and we could turn over the 
wounded to them. All night long they jour- 
neyed back and forth transporting such as 
could stand the trip to the main evacuation 
camp at Haditha. 

By daybreak we were once more under way. 
Under cover of darkness the Arabs had pillaged 
the abandoned supplies, in some cases killing 
the wounded Turks. The transport animals 



ON THE EUPHRATES 115 

of the enemy and their cavalry horses were in 
very bad shape. They had evidently ))een 
hard put to it to bring through sufficient fodder 
during the wet winter months when the roads 
were so deep in mud as to be all but impassable. 
Instead of being distant from Ana the eight 
miles that we had measured on the map, we 
found that we were seventeen, but we made it 
without any serious hindrance. The town was 
most attractive, embowered in gardens which 
skirt the river's edge for a distance of four or 
five miles. In addition to the usual pahns and 
fruit-trees there were great gnarled ohves, the 
first I had seen in Mesopotamia, as were also 
the almond-trees. It must be of great antiq- 
uity, for the prophet Isaiah speaks of it as 
a place where kings had reigned, but from 
which, even in his time, the grandeur had de- 
parted. 

The greater part of the enemy had already 
abandoned the town, but we captured the Turk- 
ish governor and a good number of the garrison, 
and many that had escaped from Haditha. 
The disaster at Khan Baghdadi had only been 
reported the afternoon before, as we had of 
course cut all the telegraph wires, and the 
governor had not thought it possible we would 



116 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

continue the pursuit so far. He had spent 
most of his hfe in Hungary and had been given 
this post only a few months previous to our 
advance. From the prisoners we had taken at 
Haditha we had extracted conflicting estimates 
as to the time when Colonel Tennant, the 
commander of our air forces, had been sent on, 
and from those we took at Ana we received 
equally varying accounts. The cars had been 
ordered to push on in search of the colonel as 
long as sufficient gasolene remained to bring 
them back. Captain Todd with the Eighth 
Battery was in the lead when some thirty miles 
north of Ana they caught sight of a group of 
camels surrounded by horsemen. A couple of 
belts from the machine-guns scattered the 
escort, and Colonel Tennant and his compan- 
ion, Major Hobart, were soon safe in the tur- 
ret of one of the cars. 

From some of our Turkish captives we 
heard about a large gold convoy which had been 
sent back from Ana; some said one day, and 
others two, before our arrival. The supply of 
fuel that we had brought in the tenders was 
almost exhausted, so that it would be necessary 
to procure more in order to continue the pur- 
suit. Major Thompson, who was in command 



ON THE EUPHRATES 117 

of the armored-car detachment, instructed me 
to take all the tenders and go back as far as 
was necessary to find a petrol dump from which 
I could draw a thousand gallons. I emptied 
the trucks and loaded them with such of the 
wounded as could stand the jolting they were 
bound to receive because of the speed at which 
I must travel. I also took a few of the more 
important prisoners, among them the governor 
of Ana. He was a cultivated middle-aged 
man who spoke no Arabic but quite good 
French. It was mid-afternoon when we started, 
and I hadn't the most remote idea where I 
would find a sufiicient quantity of petrol. Dur- 
ing the run back we were sniped at occasionally 
by Turks who were still hiding in the hills. A 
small but determined force could have com- 
pletely halted the cars in a number of different 
places where the road wound through narrow 
rock-crowned gorges, or along ledges cut in 
the hillside and hemmed in by the river. In 
such spots the advance of the armored cars 
could either have been completely checked, or 
at all events seriously hampered and delayed, 
merely by rolling great boulders down on top 
of us. 

When we had retraced our steps for about 



118 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

sixty miles I was lucky enough to get wind of 
an enemy petrol dump that our men had dis- 
covered. It was a special aeroplane supply 
and the colonel of the infantry regiment who 
was guarding it had been instructed to allow 
none of it to be used for automobiles. He 
showed his desire to co-operate and his ability 
to read the spirit rather than the letter of a 
command by letting me load my tenders. The 
L. A. M. batteries were well regarded and we 
everywhere encountered a willingness to meet 
us more than half-way and aid us in the thou- 
sand and one points that make so much dif- 
ference in obtaining results. 

By the time that we had everything in readi- 
ness for our return run it was long after dark 
and the men were exhausted. I managed to 
get some tea, but naturally no sugar or milk. 
The strong steaming brew served to wash down 
the scanty supply of cold bully beef. Fortu- 
nately it was a brilliant starlit night, but even 
so it was difficult to avoid ditches and washouts, 
and the road seemed interminable. Not long 
after we left w^e ran into a couple of armored 
cars that had been detailed to bring the rescued 
aviators back, after they had been reoutfitted 
and supplied as far as our limited resources 



ON THE EUPHRATES 119 

would permit. During the halt I found that 
my sergeant had produced from somewhere or 
other an emergency rum ration which he was 
issuing. An old-army, experienced sergeant 
always managed to hold over a reserve from 
former issues for just such occasions as this, 
when it would be of inestimable value. I had 
been driving all day and had the greatest dif- 
ficulty in keeping awake. Twice I dozed off. 
Once I awakened just as the car started over 
the edge of an embankment; the other time 
a large rock in the road brought me back to 
the world. It was two o'clock in the morning 
when we wearily crept into Ana. 

The expedition to capture the gold convoy 
was to start at four, so after two hours' sleep 
I bundled into one of the Rolls-Royces and 
the column swung out into the road. Through 
the mist loomed the sinister, businesslike out- 
lines of the armored car ahead of me. Captain 
Carr of the Thirteenth L. A. M. B.'s* was in 
command of the expedition. Unless we were 
in action or in a locality where we momentarily 
expected to be under fire from rifle or machine- 
gun, the oflficer commanding the car and his 
N. C. 0. stood in the well behind the turret, 

* Light Armored Motor Battery. 



120 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

steadying themselves with leather loops riveted 
to its sides. On long runs the tool-boxes on 
either side of the well formed convenient seats. 
Wlien the car became engaged the crew would 
get inside, pulling the steel doors shut. The 
slits through which the driver and the man 
next him looked could be made still smaller 
when the firing was heavy, and the peep-holes 
at either side and in the rear had slides which 
could be closed. The largest aperture was that 
around the tube of the gun. Sphnters of lead 
came in continuously, and sometimes chance 
directed a bullet to an opening. One of our 
drivers was shot straight through the head 
near Ramadie. The bottom of the car was of 
wood, and bullets would ricochet up through 
it, but to have had it made of steel would have 
added too much weight. The large gasolene- 
tank behind was usually protected by plating, 
but even so was fairly vulnerable. A reserve- 
tank holding ten gallons was built inside the 
turret. We almost invariably had trouble 
with the feed-pipes leading from it. During 
the great heat of the summer the inside of the 
turret was a veritable fiery furnace, with the 
pedals so hot that they scorched the feet. 

Forty miles above Ana we came upon a large 
khan. These road-houses are built at intervals 



ON THE EUPHRATES 121 

along the main caravan routes. Their plan is 
simple: four walls with two tiers of rooms or 
booths built into them, enclosing an open court 
in which the camels and horses are tethered 
during the night. The whole is strongly made 
to resist the inroads of the desert tribesmen. 
As we drove to the heavy gate, a wild clamor 
met our ears from a confused jumble of Jewish 
and Armenian merchants that had taken refuge 
within. Some of them had left Ana on their 
way to Aleppo before the news of the fall of 
Khan Baghdadi had reached the town. Others 
had been despatched by the Turks when the 
news of our advance arrived. All had been to 
a greater or lesser degree plundered by the 
Arabs. Most of the baggage animals had been 
run off, and the merchants were powerless to 
move. The women were weeping and implor- 
ing help, and the children tumbled about among 
the confused heaps of merchandise. Some of 
the Armenians had relations in Baghdad about 
whom I was able to give them bits of informa- 
tion. All begged permission to go back to 
Ana and thence to the capital. We, of course, 
had no means of supplying them with trans- 
portation, and any attempt to recapture their 
lost property was out of the question. 

A few miles on we made out a troop of Arabs 



122 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

hurrying inland, a mile or so away from us, 
across a couple of ravines. They had some of 
the stolen camels and were laden down with 
plunder. Two of our cars made a fruitless at- 
tempt to come to terms with them, but only 
succeeded in placing a few well-aimed bursts 
from their machine-guns among them. 

We now began to come up with bands of 
Turks. We ran across a number of isolated 
stragglers who had been stripped by the Arabs. 
A few had been killed. They as a rule sur- 
rendered without any hesitation. We disarmed 
them and told them to walk back toward Ana. 
Several times we had short engagements with 
Turkish cavalry. As a general thing the ground 
was so very broken up that it was impossible 
to manoeuvre. I was riding a good deal of 
the time in the Ford tender that we had brought 
along with a few supplies, and when one of the 
tires blew out I waited behind to replace it. 
The armored cars had quite a start and we 
raced along to catch them. In my hurry I 
failed to notice that they had left the road in 
pursuit of a troop of cavalry, so when we 
sighted a large square building of the sort the 
Turks use as barracks, I made sure that the 
cars had been there before me. We drove up 



ON THE EUPHRATES 123 

to the door and I jumped out and shoved it 
open. In the yard were some infantry and a 
few cavalry. I had only my stick— my Webley 
revolver was still in its holster. There was 
nothing to do but put on a bold front, so I 
shouted in Arabic to the man I took to be the 
officer in command, telling him to surrender, 
and trying to act as if our forces were just out- 
side. I think he must have been more sur- 
prised than I was, for he did so immediately, 
turning over the post to me. Eldridge, the 
Ford driver, had succeeded in disengaging the 
rifle that he had strapped in beside him, and 
we made the rounds under the escort of our 
captive. 

One wing of the post was used as a hospital, 
under the charge of an intelligent little Arme- 
nian. He seemed well informed about the war, 
and asked the question that was the universal 
wail of all the Armenians we encountered: 
"When would Great Britain free their country, 
and would she make it an independent state .^" 
There was a definite limit to the number of 
prisoners we could manage to carry back, but 
I offered the doctor to include him. His an- 
swer was to go to his trunk and produce a 
picture of his wife and little daughter. They 



124 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

were, he told me, in Constantinople, and it was 
now two years since he had had leave, so that 
as his turn was due, he would wait on the 
chance of seeing his family. 

When the cars came up we set off again in 
pursuit of the elusive gold convoy. We could 
get no accurate information concerning it. 
Some said it was behind, others ahead. We 
never ran it down. It may well be that it 
was concealed in a ravine near the road a 
few yards from where we passed. Just short 
of a town called Abu Kemal we caught three 
Germans. They were in terror when we took 
them, and afterward said that they had ex- 
pected to be shot. Under decent treatment 
they soon became so insolent that they had to 
be brought up short. 

During the run back to Ana we picked up 
the more important of our prisoners and took 
them with us. Twenty-two were all we could 
manage. I was running one of the big cars. 
It was always a surprise to see how easy they 
were to handle in spite of the weight of the 
armor-plate. We each took great pride in 
the car in which we generally rode. All had 
names. In the Fourteenth one section had 
*' Silver Dart" and "Silver Ghost" and another 



ON THE EUPHRATES 125 

" Gray Terror" and " Gray Knight." The car 
in which I rode a great deal of the time met its 
fate only a few days before the armistice, 
long after I had gone to France. Two direct 
hits from an Austrian "eighty-eight" ended its 
career. 

It was after midnight when we got back to 
our camp in a palm-garden in Ana. Although 
we had not succeeded in capturing the gold con- 
voy, we had brought in a number of valuable 
prisoners, and among other things I had found 
some papers belonging to a German political 
agent whom we had captured. These con- 
tained much information about the Arab situa- 
tion, and through them it was all but proved 
that the German was the direct instigator of 
the murder of the political officer at Nejef. 
An amusing sidelight was thrown in the letters 
addressed by Arab sheiks through this agent 
to the Kaiser thanking him for the iron crosses 
they had been awarded. There must have 
been an underlying grim humor in distributing 
crosses to the Mohammedan Arabs in recogni- 
tion of their efforts to withstand the advance 
into the Holy Land of the Christian invaders. 

On our arrival at Ana we were told that 
orders had come through that the town be 



126 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

evacuated on the following morning. Prep- 
arations were made to blow up the ammuni- 
tion dump, which was fortunately concentrated 
in a series of buildings that joined each other. 
We warned the inhabitants and advised them 
to hide in the caves along the hillsides. We 
ourselves went back to the camp which we 
had occupied near the bridge the night before 
entering Ana. During the afternoon Major 
Edye, a political officer, turned up, travelling 
alone with an Arab attendant. He pitched his 
camp, consisting of a saddle and blanket, close 
beside us. He was an extraordinarily interest- 
ing man, with a great gift for languages. In the 
course of a year or so's wandering in Abyssinia 
he had learned both ancient and modern Abys- 
sinian. There was a famous German Orientalist 
with whom he corresponded in the pre-war days. 
He had mailed him a letter just at the out- 
break, which, written in ancient Abyssinian, 
must have been a good deal of a puzzle to the 
censors. 

The main explosion, taking place at the ap- 
pointed time, was succeeded by smaller ones, 
which continued at gradually lengthening inter- 
vals throughout the night. General Cassels, 
who had commanded the cavalry brigade so 



ON THE EUPHRATES 127 

ably throughout the advance, wished to return 
to Ana on the following morning in order to 
check up the thoroughness with which the 
dump had been destroyed. He took an escort 
of armored cars, and as I was the only one in 
the batteries who could speak Arabic, my ser- 
vices were requisitioned. As we approached 
the town the rattle of the small-arms ammuni- 
tion sounded like a Fourth of July celebration. 
The general noticed that I had a kodak and 
asked me to go out into the dump and take 
some photographs. There was nothing to do 
but put on a bold front, but I have spent hap- 
pier moments than those in which I edged my 
way gingerly over the smoking heaps to a 
ruined wall from which I could get a good view 
for my camera. As I came back a large shell 
exploded and we hastily moved the cars farther 
away. 

I went to the mayor's house to find out how 
the town had fared. He was a solemn old 
Arab, and showed me the damage done by the 
shells with an absolutely expressionless face. 
The houses within a fair radius had been rid- 
dled, but the natives had taken our warning 
and no one had been killed. After a cup of 
coffee in a lovely garden on the river-bank. 



128 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

I came back to the cars and we ran on through 
to Haditha. Here we were to remain for a 
week or ten days to permit the evacuation of 
the captured supphes. 

Thus far we had been having good luck with 
the weather, but it now began to threaten rain. 
We crawled beneath the cars with our blankets 
and took such precautions as were possible, 
but it availed us little when a veritable hurri- 
cane blew up at midnight. I was washed out 
from under my car, but before dark I had 
marked down a deserted hut, and thither I 
groped my way. Although it was abandoned 
by the Arabs, living traces of their occupancy 
remained. Still, even that was preferable to 
the rain, and the roof proved unexpectedly 
water-tight. 

All next day the storm continued. The 
Wadi Hauran, a large ravine reaching back 
into the desert for a hundred and fifty miles, 
became a boiling torrent. When we crossed 
over, it was as dry as a bone. A heavy lorry 
on which an anti-aircraft gun was mounted 
had been swirled away and smashed to bits. 
The ration question had been difficult all along, 
but now any further supply was temporarily 
out of the question. 



ON THE EUPHRATES 129 

Oddly enough, I was the only member of the 
brigade occupying Haditha who could speak 
enough Arabic to be of any use, so I was sent 
to look up the local mayor to see whether there 
was any food to be purchased. The town is 
built on a long island equidistant from either 
bank. We ferried across in barges. The na- 
tive method was simpler. They inflated goat- 
skins, removed their clothes, which they had 
fastened in a bundle on top of their heads, and 
with one hand on the goatskin they paddled 
and drifted over. By starting from the head of 
the island they could reach the shore opposite 
the down-stream end. The bobbing heads of 
the dignified old graybeards of the community 
looked most ludicrous. On landing they would 
solemnly don their clothes, deflate the skins, 
and go their way. 

The mayor proved both intelligent and agree- 
able. The food situation was such that it was 
obviously impossible for him to offer us any 
serious help. We held a conclave in the guest- 
house, sitting cross-legged among the cushions. 
In the centre a servant roasted coffee-beans on 
the large shovel-spoon that they use for that 
purpose. The representative village worthies 
impressed me greatly. The desert Arabs are 



130 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

always held to be vastly superior to their kins- 
men of the town, and it is undoubtedly true as 
a general rule ; nevertheless, the elders of Hadi- 
tha were an unusually fine group of men. We 
got a few eggs, which were a most desirable 
luxury after a steady diet of black unsweetened 
tea and canned beef. We happened to have a 
sufficient supply of tea to permit us to make an 
appreciated gift to the village. 

My shoes had collapsed a few days before 
and I borrowed a pair from a Turk who had no 
further use for them. These were several sizes 
too large and fashioned in an oblong shape of 
mathematical exactness. Even in the motor 
machine-gun service, there is little that exceeds 
one's shoes in importance, and I was looking 
forward with almost equal eagerness to a square 
meal and a pair of my own shoes. The supply 
of reading-matter had fallen very low. I had 
only Disraeli's Tancred, about which I found 
myself unable to share Lady Burton's feelings, 
and a French account of a voyage from Bagh- 
dad to Aleppo in 1808. The author, Louis 
Jacques Rousseau, a cousin of the great Jean 
Jacques, belonged to a family of noted Orien- 
talists. Born in Persia, and married to the 
daughter of the Dutch consul-general to that 



ON THE EUPHRATES 131 

country, he was admirably equipped for the 
distinguished diplomatic career that lay be- 
fore him in the East and in northern Africa. 
His treatises on the archaeological remains that 
he met with on his many voyages are intel- 
ligent and thorough. The river towns have 
changed but little in the last hundred years, 
and the sketch of Hit might have been made 
only yesterday. 

Within three days after the rise, the waters 
of the Wadi Hauran subsided sufficiently for 
us to cross, and I received orders to return to 
Baghdad. The rain had brought about a 
change in the desert since we passed through 
on our way up. The lines of Paterson, the 
Australian poet, kept running through my head: 

" For the rain and drought and sunshine make no changes 

in the street, 
In the sullen line of buildings and the ceaseless tramp 

of feet, 
But the bush hath moods and changes, as the seasons 

rise and fall. 
And the men who know the bushland they are loyal 

through it all." 

The formerly arid floor of the desert was car- 
peted with a soft green, with myriads of ht- 
tle flowers, all small, but delicately fashioned. 



132 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

There were poppies, dwarf daisies, expanses of 
buttercups, forget-me-nots, and diminutive red 
flowers whose name I did not know. It started 
raining again, and we only just succeeded in 
winning our way through to Baghdad before 
the road became impassable. 



VI 

Baghdad Sketches 



VI 

BAGHDAD SKETCHES 

Although never in Baghdad for long at a 
time, I generally had occasion to spend four 
or five days there every other month. The 
life in any city is complex and interesting, but 
here it was especially so. We were among a 
totally foreign people, but the ever-felt intangi- 
ble barrier of color was not present. For many 
of the opportunities to mingle with the natives 
I was indebted to Oscar Heizer, the American 
consul. Mr. Heizer has been twenty-five 
years in the Levant, the greater part of which 
time he has spent in the neighborhood of Con- 
stantinople. The outbreak of the war found 
him stationed at one of the principal ports of 
the Black Sea. There he witnessed part of the 
terrible Armenian massacres, when vast herds 
of the wretched people were driven inland to 
perish of starvation by the roadsides. Quiet 
and unassuming, but ever ready to act with 
speed and decision, he was a universal favorite 
with native and foreigner alike. 

135 



136 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

With him I used to ferry across the river for 
tea with the Asadulla Khan, the Persian con- 
sul. The house consisted of three wings built 
around a garden. The fourth side was the 
river-bank. The court was a jungle of flower- 
ing fruit-trees, alive with birds of different 
kinds, all singing garrulously without pause. 
There we would sit sipping sherbet, and crack- 
ing nuts, among which salted watermelon seeds 
figured prominently. Coffee and sweets of 
many and devious kinds were served, with 
arrack and Scotch whiskey for those who had 
no religious scruples. The Koran's injunction 
against strong drink was not very conscien- 
tiously observed by the majority, and even 
those who did not drink in public, rarely ab- 
stained in private. Only the very conservative 
— and these were more often to be found in the 
smaller towns — rigorously obeyed the prophet's 
commands. It was pleasant to smoke in the 
shade and watch the varied river-craft slipping 
by. The public bellams plied to and fro, rowed 
by the swart owners, while against them jostled 
the gufas — ^built like the coracles of ancient 
Britain — a round basket coated with pitch. 
No Anglo-Saxon can see them without think- 
ing of the nursery rhyme of the "wise men of 



BAGHDAD SKETCHES 137 

Gotham who went to sea in a tub." These 
gufas were some of them twenty-five feet in 
diameter, and carried surprising loads — some- 
times sheep and cattle alone — sometimes men 
and women — often both indiscriminately min- 
gled. Propelling a gufa was an art in itself, for 
in the hands of the uninitiated it merely spun 
around without advancing a foot in the de- 
sired direction. The natives used long round- 
bladed paddles, and made good time across 
the river. Crossing over in one was a demo- 
cratic affair, especially when the women were 
returning from market with knots of struggling 
chickens slung over their shoulders. 

AsaduUa Khan's profile always reminded me 
of an Inca idol that I once got in Peru. Among 
his scribes were several men of culture who 
discoursed most sagely on Persian literature; 
on Sadi and Hafiz, both of whom they held to 
be superior to Omar Khayyam. I tried through 
many channels to secure a manuscript of the 
"Rubaiyat," but all I succeeded in obtaining 
was a lithograph copy with no place or date of 
publication; merely the remark that it had 
been printed during the cold months. I was 
told that the writings of Omar Khayyam were 
regarded as immoral and for that reason were 



138 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

not to be found in religious households. My 
Persian friends would quote at length from 
Sadi's Gulistan or Rose Garden, and go into 
raptures over its beauty. 

Below the consulate was a landing-place, and 
when we were ready to leave we would go down 
to the river-bank preceded by our servants 
carrying lanterns. They would call "Abu 
bellam" until a boat appeared. The term 
"abu" always amused me. Its literal meaning 
is "father." In the bazaars a shop-owner was 
always hailed as "father" of whatever wares 
he had for sale. I remember one fat old man 
who sold porous earthenware jars — customers 
invariably addressed him as "Abu hub" — 
"Father of water-coolers." 

My best friend among the natives was a 
Kurdish chief named Hamdi Bey Baban. His 
father had been captured and taken to Con- 
stantinople. After living there a number of 
years in semicaptivity he died — ^by poison it 
was said. Hamdi was not allowed to return to 
Kurdistan until after he was a grown man and 
had almost forgotten his native language. He 
spoke and read both French and English. 
Eventually permission was granted him to live 



BAGHDAD SKETCHES 139 

in Baghdad as long as he kept out of the Kur- 
dish hills, so he set off by motor accompanied 
only by a French chauffeur. Gasolene was sent 
ahead by camel caravan to be left for him at 
selected points. The journey was not without 
incident, for the villagers had never before seen 
an automobile and regarded it as a devil; 
often stones were thrown at them, and on one 
occasion they were mobbed and Hamdi only 
escaped by driving full speed through the 
crowd. 

His existence in Baghdad had been subject 
to sudden upheavals. Once he was arrested 
and convoyed back to Constantinople; and 
just before the advance of the British his life 
was in great danger. Naturally enough he 
had little love for the Turk and staked every- 
thing on the final victory of the Alhes. 

He intended writing a book on the history of 
his family, in which he was much interested. 
For material he was constantly purchasing 
books and manuscripts. In the East many 
well-known histories still exist only in manu- 
script form, and when a man wishes to build 
up a library he engages scribes and sends them 
to the place where a famous manuscript is kept 
with an order to make a copy. In the same 



140 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

way Hamdi Bey had men busied transcribing 
rare chronicles deaHng with the career of his 
family — extant in but one or two examples in 
mosques. He once presented me with a large 
manuscript in Persian in which his family is 
mentioned, the mention taking the form of a 
statement to the effect that seventeen of them 
had had their heads removed ! 

Next to various small tradesmen with whom 
I used to gossip, drink coffee, and play dom- 
inoes, my best Arab friend was Abdul Kader 
Pasha, a striking old man who had been a 
faithful ally to the British through thick and 
thin. The dinners at his house on the river- 
bank were feasts such as one reads of in an- 
cient history. Course succeeded course with- 
out any definite plan; any one of them would 
have made a large and delicious meal in itself. 
True to Arab custom, the son of the house 
never sat down at table with his father, al- 
though before and after dinner he talked and 
smoked with us. 

I had a number of good friends among the 
Armenians. There was not one of them but 
had some near relation, frequently a parent 
or a brother or sister, still among the Turks. 
Sometimes they knew them to be dead, more 




A jeweller's hootli in the Imzaar 



BAGHDAD SKETCHES 141 

frequently they could only hope that such was 
the case and there was no further suffering to 
be endured. Many of these Armenians be- 
longed to prominent families, numbering among 
their members men who had held the most 
important government posts in Constanti- 
nople. The secretary of the treasury was 
almost invariably an Armenian, for the race 
outstrips the Jews in its money touch. 

With one family I dined quite often — the 
usual interminable Oriental feast varying only 
from the Arab or Turkish dinners in a few spe- 
cial national dishes. All, excepting the aged 
grandmother, spoke French, and the daughters 
had a thorough grounding in the literature. 
Such English books as they knew they had 
read in French translations. The house was 
attractively furnished, with really beautiful 
rugs and old silverware. The younger genera- 
tion played bridge, and the girls were always 
well dressed in European fashion. WTience the 
clothes came was a mystery, for nothing could 
have been brought in since the war, and even 
in ante-bellum days foreign clothes of that 
grade could never have been stocked but must 
have been imported in individual orders. The 
evenings were thoroughly enjoyable, for everj^- 



142 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

thing was in such marked contrast to our 
every-day life. It must be remembered that 
these few Armenians were the only women with 
whom we could talk and laugh in Occidental 
fashion. 

By far the best-informed and cleverest Arab 
was Pere Anastase. He was a Catholic, and 
under the supervision of the Political De- 
partment edited the local Arab paper. All his 
life he had worked building up a library — 
gathering rare books throughout Syria and 
Mesopotamia. He was himself an author of 
no small reputation. Just before the British 
took Baghdad the Germans pillaged his col- 
lection, sending the more valuable books to 
Constantinople and Berlin, and turning the 
rest over to the populace. The soldiers made 
great bonfires of many — others found their 
way to the bazaars, where he was later able to 
repurchase some of them. When talking of the 
sacking of his house, Pere Anastase would work 
himself into a white heat of fury and his eyes 
would flash as he bitterly cursed the vandals 
who had destroyed his treasures. 

It was in Baghdad that I first ran into Major 
E. B. Soane, whose Through Mesopotamia and 
Kurdistan in Disguise is a classic. Soane was 



BAGHDAD SKETCHES 143 

born in southern France, his mother French 
and his father EngHsh. The latter walked 
across the United States from ocean to ocean 
in the early forties, so Soane came by his rov- 
ing, adventurous spirit naturally. When still 
but little more than a boy he went out to work 
in the Anglo-Persian Bank, and immediately 
interested himself in the language and litera- 
ture of the country. Some of his holidays he 
spent in the British Museum translating and 
cataloguing Persian manuscripts. Becoming 
interested in the Kurds, he spent a number of 
years among them, learning their languages 
and customs and joining in their raids. 

As soon as we got a foothold in the Kurdish 
Hills, Soane was sent up to administer the cap- 
tured territory. His headquarters were at 
Khanikin, twenty-five miles from Kizil Robat 
and but a short distance from the Persian fron- 
tier. One morning during the time that I was 
stationed in that district I motored over to see 
him. It was a glorious day. The cloud effects 
were most beautiful, towering in billows of 
white above the snow peaks, against a back- 
ground of deepest blue. The road wound in 
and out among the barren foot-hills until sud- 
denly as I topped a rise I saw right below a 



144 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

great clump of palm-trees, with houses showing 
through here and there — ^the whole divided by 
a lovely river bestridden by an old seven-arch 
bridge. I picked my way through the narrow 
streets, scattering ragged Kurds right and left; 
past part of the covered bazaar, until I came 
to a house with a large courtyard, thronged 
with a motley array of Kurdish Irregulars, 
armed with every sort of weapon. It was there 
that Soane administered his stern but prac- 
tical justice, for he thoroughly understood how 
to handle these men. 

The district had suffered fearfully, for It had 
been occupied In turn by Turk and Russian, 
and then Turk again, before we took It over, 
and the unfortunate natives had been pillaged 
and robbed mercilessly. Thousands starved to 
death. Wlien I was at Deli Abbas ghastly 
bands of ragged skeletons would come through 
to us begging food and work. Soane turned a 
large khan on the outskirts of the town Into a 
poorhouse, and here he lodged the starving 
women and children that drifted In from all 
over Kurdistan. It was a fearful assemblage 
of scarecrows. As they got better he selected 
women from among them to whom he turned 
over the administration of the khan. They 



BAGHDAD SKETCHES 145 

divided the unfortunates in gangs, and super- 
vised the issue of dates on which they were fed. 
Such as were physically able were employed 
in cleaning the town. The Kurds are a fine, 
self-respecting race and it was easy to under- 
stand Soane's enthusiasm for them. 

In Baghdad you lived either in the cellars 
or on the housetops. The former were called 
serdabs. A large chimney, cowled to face the 
prevailing wind, served for ventilation, and on 
the hottest days one was cool and comfortable. 
We slept on the roofs, and often dined there, 
too. Since the town was the General Head- 
quarters of the Expeditionary Force, one was 
always sure to meet many friends. A com- 
fortable and well-run ofiicers' club was in- 
stalled, as well as warrant officers' and en- 
listed men's clubs. 

Occasionally race meetings were planned and 
the various divisions would send representa- 
tives. Frank Wooton, the well-known jockey, 
was a despatch-rider, and usually succeeded in 
getting leave enough to allow him to ride some 
general's horses. An Arab race formed part of 
the programme. Once a wild tribesman who 
had secured a handsome lead almost lost the 



146 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

race by taking off his cloak and waving it 
round Lis head as he gave ear-piercing shouts 
of triumph. The Arab riding second was less 
emotional and attended better to the business 
in hand, but his horse was not quite good 
enough to make the difference. 

The scene at the race-course was a gay one. 
The color was chiefly contributed by the Jew- 
esses who wore their hooded silk cloaks of 
lively hue — green or pink or yellow. The only 
crowd that I saw to vie with it was one which 
watched the prisoners taken at Ramadie march 
through the town. Turkish propaganda, cir- 
culated in the bazaars, gave out that instead 
of taking the prisoners we claimed, we had in 
reality suffered a defeat, and it was decided 
that the sight of the captive Turks would have 
a salutary effect upon the townsmen. Looking 
down from a housetop the red fezzes and the 
gay-colored abas made the crowd look like a 
vast field of poppies. 

When I was at Samarra an amusing incident 
took place in connection with a number of 
officers' wives who were captured at Ramadie. 
The army commander didn't wish to ship them 
off to India and Burma with their husbands, 
so he sent them up to Samarra with instruc- 



BAGHDAD SKETCHES 147 

tions that they be returned across the Hnes to 
the Turks. After many aeroplane messages 
were exchanged it was agreed that we should 
leave them at a designated hill and that the 
Turks would later come for them. Meanwhile 
we had arranged quarters for them, trying to 
do everything in a manner that would be in 
harmony with the Turkish convenances. When 
the wives were escorted forth to be turned 
back to their countrymen, they were all weep- 
ing bitterly. Wliether it was that the Turk 
in his casual manner decided that one day 
was as good as another, or whether he felt 
that he had no particular use for these par- 
ticular women, we never knew, but at all 
events twenty-four hours later one of our pa- 
trols came upon the prisoners still forlornly 
waiting. We shipped them back to Baghdad. 
Occasionally I would go to one of the Arab 
theatres. The plays were generally burlesques, 
for the Arab has a keen sense of humor and 
greatly appreciates a joke. Most of the puns 
were too involved for me to follow, but there 
was always a certain amount of slap-stick 
comedy that could be readily understood. 
Then there was dancing — as a whole monoto- 
nous and mediocre; but there was one old man 



148 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

who was a remarkable performer, and would 
have been appreciated on any stage in the 
world. The topical songs invariably amused 
me — ^they were so universal in spirit. The 
chorus of one which was a great hit ran: 
"Haido, haido, rahweni passak!" "I say, I 
say, show me your pass." There had been 
much trouble with spies and every one was 
required to provide himself with a certificate 
of good conduct and to show it on demand. 
It was to this that the song referred. 

Captain C. G. Lloyd was my companion on 
many rambles among the natives. He had 
been stationed in Burma and India for many 
years, and was a good Persian scholar. Like 
every one who has knocked about to any extent 
among native peoples, his career had not been 
lacking in incident. I remember on one oc- 
casion asking him why it was that he never 
joined me in a cup of coffee when we stopped 
at a coffee-house. He replied that he had al- 
ways been wary of coffee since a man with 
him was poisoned by a cup which was intended 
for him. 

I always looked forward to a trip to Bagh- 
dad, for it gave me a chance to mingle in a 
totally different life from that which daily 



BAGHDAD SKETCHES 149 

surrounded me, and temporarily, at least, for- 
get about the war in which the world was 
plunged. Still, the morning set to leave in- 
variably found me equally glad to shove off 
once more into the great expanses of the 
desert. 



VII 

The Attack on the Persian Front 



VII 

THE ATTACK ON THE PERSIAN 
FRONT 

When I reached headquarters after the at- 
tack on the Euphrates front, I was expecting 
to hear that my transfer to France had gone 
through and receive orders to proceed thither 
immediately. It had always been my inten- 
tion to try to join the American army once it 
began to take a real part in the war, and for 
some time past I had been casting about in 
my mind for the best method to carry out my 
plans. TOien affairs looked so very black for 
the Allied forces in March and April, 1918, I 
decided that France was the place where every 
one, who could by any possibihty manage it, 
should be. General Gillman, the chief of 
staff, had on more than one occasion shown 
himself a good friend, and I determined to 
once more task his kindness. He said that he 
thought he could arrange for my transfer to 
France, and that once there I could work out 

153 



154 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

the best way of getting into the American 
army. 

Everything went well, and I was daily ex- 
pecting my orders, when Major Thompson, 
who commanded the brigade of armored cars, 
sent for me and told me that an advance was 
being planned on the Kurdish front. Only 
two batteries were to be taken — the Eighth 
and the Thirteenth — but he said that he would 
like to have me go along in command of 
the supply-train. Of course I jumped at the 
chance, as the attack promised to be most in- 
teresting. 

We were told to be ready to move on an 
hour's notice. For several days the weather 
held us back. The rain, helped out by the 
melting snow from the mountains, caused the 
rivers to rise in flood. The Tigris rose sixteen 
feet in a night. The lower bridge was broken 
and washed away. Everything possible was 
done to reinforce the upper bridge, but it was 
hourly expected to give way under the strain 
of the whirling yellow waters. The old Arab 
rivermen said that they could tell by the color 
just which of the tributaries were in spate. 
When they saw or thought they saw a new ad- 
mixture, they would shake their heads and 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 155 

say: "Such and such a river is now also in 
flood — ^the Tigris will rise still further." 

On the night of April 24 we at length got 
our orders and at six o'clock the following 
morning we set out, prepared to run through 
to Ain Leilah. The country was indeed 
changed since I passed through six weeks 
before. The desert had blossomed. We ran 
through miles and miles of clover; the sweet 
smell seemed so "wholesomely American, re- 
calling home and family, and the meadows of 
Long Island. The brilliant red poppies were 
more in keeping with the country; and we 
passed by Indian cavalry reinforcements with 
the scarlet flowers stuck in their black hair 
and twined in the head-stalls of the horses. 

As we approached the hills they looked less 
bleak — sl soft green clothed the hollows, and 
the little oasis of Ain Leilah no longer stood out 
in the same marked contrast as when last I 
visited it. The roads were in good shape, and 
we reached camp at four in the afternoon. I 
took one of the tenders and set off to look up 
some old friends in the regiments near by. As 
I passed a group of Arabs that had just fin- 
ished work on the roads, I noticed that they 
were playing a game that was new to me. A 



156 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

stake was driven into the ground, with a 
horsehair rope ten or twelve feet in length at- 
tached to it. An old man had hold of the end 
of the rope. About the stake were piled some 
clothes, and the Arabs were standing around 
in a circle just out of reach of the man with the 
rope. The object was to dart in and snatch 
up something from the heap without the old 
man who was on guard catching you. They 
were enjoying themselves hugely — the oldest 
graybeards behaving as if they were children — 
a very pleasant side of the Arab. 

Our instructions were to be ready to pull 
out before daybreak. The mission was, as 
usual, a flanking one. The direct attack was to 
be delivered on Kara Tepe, and, if that were 
successful, upon Kifri. We were to intercept 
the arrival of reinforcements, or cut off the 
retreat of the garrisons, as the case might be. 

In the early morning hours the country was 
lovely — rolling grass land "with a hint of hills 
behind" — smiles of daisies with clusters of 
blood-red poppies scattered through them — 
and occasional hollows carpeted with a bril- 
liant blue flower. In the river courses there 
were numbers of brilliantly hued birds — the 
gayest colors I saw in Mesopotamia with the 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 157 

exception of the vivid arsenic-green birds 
around Ana on the Euphrates. In one place I 
thought that the ground was covered with red 
flowers, but a close inspection proved it to be 
myriads of tiny red insects swarming on the 
grass stems. 

Column marching is slow and wearisome, and 
after the sun rose the heat became intense. 
The dust smothered us; there was not a breath 
of air to rid us of it for even a moment. The 
miles seemed interminable. At noon we halted 
beside a narrow stream laio\\Ti as Oil River — a 
common name in this part of the country where 
oil abounds and the water is heavily impreg- 
nated with it. For drinking it was abomina- 
ble — and almost spoiled the tea upon which 
we relied for a staple. A few miles beyond, the 
engineers found a suitable location to^ throw a 
bridge across the creek. The main body was 
halted at a place known as Umr Maidan and 
we were sent over the bridge to form across 
the main road leading from Kara Tepe back 
into the Turkish territory. 

It was nightfall before we had effected a 
crossing, and we groped our way along until 
we came upon the road. It was impossible to 
do very much in the way of selecting a posi- 



158 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

tion, but we arranged the cars as best we could. 
When you were off at large in the desert you 
were what the army called "Out in the blue," 
and that was certainly our situation on the 
night of April 26. We all expected that we 
would intercept traffic going one way or the 
other, but the night passed without incident 
or excitement. 

By four in the morning we were once more 
feeling our way along through the darkness. 
As it lightened we came under observation by 
the Turks, who started in to shell us. We 
learned from our aeroplanes that Kifri had 
been evacuated; the garrison was falling back 
along a road running parallel to the one on 
which we were, separated by eight or ten miles 
of broken country. By this time our cavalry 
had caught up with us. They pushed off across 
country to intercept the Turks. We attempted 
to do likewise but it was more difficult, and 
what with dodging in and out to avoid a ravine 
here or a hill there, we made little headway. 
At length we struck a road that led in approxi- 
mately the direction whither we wished to go. 
It was already early afternoon before, upon 
topping a rise, we caught sight of a good-sized 
body of Turks marching on a road which ran 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 159 

along the base of a range of steep, stony hills. 
We put on as much speed as was possible, and 
headed north to try to intercept them. The 
cavalry were coming from the south, and while 
we were circling around they charged in upon 
the Turks. It was a stirring scene. The pow- 
erful Indians sat their horses with the utmost 
grace. Their drawn sabres flashed in the sun. 
As they came to close quarters the turbaned 
heads bent forward and we could hear the 
shouts and high-pitched cries of triumph as 
the riders slashed at the foe. The wounded 
and dead testified to their skill as swordsmen. 
The whole sight reminded me more of the bat- 
tle books I read as a boy than anything I saw 
in the war. About six hundred prisoners were 
taken, but many of the Turks escaped to the 
mountains and lay among the rocks, whence 
they could snipe at us with impunity. They 
were a tenacious lot, for all next day when we 
were using the road below the hills they con- 
tinued to shoot at us from the places whence 
it was impossible to dislodge them. 

While the prisoners were being brought in 
we caught sight of one of our aeroplanes crash- 
ing. Making our way over to it we found that 
neither the pilot nor the observer was seri- 



160 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

ously hurt. Flying in Mesopotamia was made 
unusually difficult by the climatic conditions. 
The planes were designed for work in France 
and during the summer months the heat and 
dryness warped the propeller blades and in- 
deed all the wooden parts. Then, too, the fine 
dust would get into the machinery when the 
aviator was taxiing for a start. Many pilots 
coming out from France with brilliant records 
met an early and untimely end because they 
could not realize how very different the con- 
ditions were. I remember one poor young 
fellow who set off on a reconnaissance without 
the food and water he was required by regu- 
lations to carry. He got lost and ran out of 
gasolene — ^being forced to land out in the 
desert. The armored cars went off in search 
of him, and on the second morning after he 
had come down they found his body near their 
bivouac. He had evidently got that far during 
the night and died of exhaustion and exposure 
practically within hearing. He was stripped 
of his clothes; whether this had been done by 
himself or by the tribesmen was never de- 
termined. A death of this sort always seems 
so much sadder than being legitimately killed in 
combat. The L. A. M. batteries were in close 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 161 

touch with the Royal Flying Corps, for when 
news came in that a plane was down in the 
desert or some part of the debatable land, we 
would be detailed to go out in search of the 
occupants. A notice printed in Arabic, Per- 
sian, Turkish, and Kurdish was fastened into 
each aeroplane informing the reader of the re- 
ward that would be paid him if the pilot were 
brought in safety to the British lines. This 
was done in case a plane got lost and was 
driven down out of its course among the 
tribesmen. 

The night of the 27th we bivouacked once 
more "out in the blue." Dawn found me 
on my way back to Umr Maidan to lay in 
a new supply of gasolene. I made a rapid 
trip and caught up with the armored cars 
in action in a large swampy plain. The grass 
was very high and the ground so soft that 
it was difficult to accomplish anything. Two 
or three small hills offered vantage-points, but 
they were not neglected by the Turk, and 
among those that fell was the colonel of the 
Twenty-First cavalry — the regiment that had 
acquitted itself so well in the charge of the day 
before. 

We were ten miles from Tuz Khurmartli, 



162 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

the next important town held by the enemy 
now that Kifri had been taken. It was thither 
that the Turks had been retreating when we 
cut them off. Finding that we were unable to 
operate effectively where we were, it was de- 
cided that we should make our way across to 
the Kifri-Kirkuk road and advance along it to 
make a frontal attack upon Tuz. Our orders 
were to proceed to a deserted village known as 
Kulawand, and wait there for the conunand to 
advance. When we got to the road we found 
the hills still occupied by camel-guns and 
machine-guns. We replied ineffectively, for 
we had no means of dislodging them, nor did 
the cavalry when they came up. Kulawand 
we found to be a fair-sized native village un- 
occupied save for a single hut full of old women 
and children. Here we waited until nightfall 
for the orders that never came. I sat under a 
ruined wall reading alternatively Camoens* 
Lusiad and David Harum until darkness fell. 
During the night some infantry came up, 
both native and British. They had had stiff 
marching during the last few days, and were 
done up, but very cheerful at the prospect of 
an attack on the morrow. They had some hard 
fighting ahead of them. The King's Own in 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 163 

particular distinguished itself in taking a 
stubbornly contested and strongly held hill. 

At dawn we were under way. We had heard 
reports during the night that the Turks had 
evacuated Tuz — ^but it was not long before we 
found that such was not the case. They were 
still there and showed every evidence of stay- 
ing. A small village five or six miles to the 
southwest was also bitterly contested. Our 
cavalry did some excellent work, capturing 
small hills held with machine-guns. 

We advanced down the road beside the hills. 
A mile before reaching Tuz we ran into the 
Aq Su, a large stream flowing through a nar- 
row cleft in the hills. Fortunately the river 
was very low, and there were several places 
where it was spread out over such a wide bed 
that it seemed as if it might be possible to get 
the cars across. I emptied a Ford van and 
set out to do some prospecting. First I went 
up-stream, which was toward the mountains, 
but I could not go far, for there was an ancient 
fort situated at the mouth of the gorge, and it 
had not been evacuated. Finding a likely look- 
ing place a little below, I made a cast and just 
succeeded in getting through. It was easy to 
see that it would not be possible for the low- 



164 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

swung Rolls to cross under their own power, 
for the fly-wheel would throw the water up 
mto the motor. There was nothing to do but 
send back for artillery horses to pull the ar- 
mored cars across. 

Meanwhile, as our artillery had practically 
ceased firing on the town and the Turks 
seemed to have entirely evacuated it, I thought 
that I would go up and take over and see 
whether there had not been some valuable 
documents left behind. I drove along past 
some abandoned artillery into the main street. 
A number of Turkish soldiers came up to sur- 
render and I told them to have the Reis Bele- 
dia — the town mayor — report to me. When 
he came I directed him to take me to the quar- 
ters of the Turkish commanding general. As 
we drove through the covered bazaar every- 
thing was closed. Scarcely anybody was in 
the streets — but I could see the inhabitants 
peeping out from behind lattices. It was a 
good thing to have the old mayor along, for 
he served as an excellent hostage, and I kept 
close watch upon him. He brought me to a 
prosperous, neat-looking house with heavy 
wooden doors. In response to his summons 
an old woman came and ushered us into a 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 165 

large, cool room, well furnished and with beau- 
tiful Kurdish rugs. There we found four young 
girls, who, it was explained to me, formed the 
Turkish general's "field harem." He had 
left in too much of a hurry to take them with 
him. They were Kurds and Circassians, or 
Georgians — and the general had shown no lack 
of taste in his selection ! True to the tradi- 
tion of the Garden of Eden, this harem proved 
disastrous to a brother officer who, having 
heard of my capture, sent me "priority" over 
the field service lines a ribald message as to 
its disposition. "Priority" wires are sent only 
on affairs of the greatest importance, and when 
I left the country my friend was slated to ex- 
plain matters before a court martial. There 
were no papers of any great value to be found, 
and I told the mayor to take me to the more 
important ammunition and supply dumps. 
By the time I had located these some cavalry 
had come in, and I went back to the river to 
help get the fighting cars across. 

Once we had these safely over we set out in 
pursuit of the Turks. The next town of im- 
portance was a ramshackle mud-walled affair 
called Tauq, twenty miles bej^ond, on the far 
side of a river known as the Tauq Chai. The 



166 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

leading cars pursued to within sight of the 
town and came in for a good deal of shelling. 

The Turks we captured were in far poorer 
shape than those we had recently taken on the 
Euphrates front. Their shoes were worn out, 
they were very ragged, and, what was of greater 
significance, they were badly nourished. The 
length of their line of communications had 
evidently severely strained them. Supplies had 
to come overland all the way from Nisibin, 
which is more than a hundred miles beyond Mo- 
sul. The broken country made the transporta- 
tion a difficult problem to solve. It was a mir- 
acle that they had the morale to fight as they 
did under such disadvantageous conditions. 

Here, as throughout the campaign, it was a 
continual source of pride to see the way in 
which our soldiers behaved to the natives. I 
never heard of a case in which man, woman, or 
child was wrongfully treated. Minor offenses 
were sometimes committed, but these were 
quickly righted. No doubt there were isolated 
instances of wrong-doing, for in such a large 
army there are bound to be degenerate in- 
dividuals from whose conduct it is unfair to 
judge the whole. 

That night we encamped in the outskirts of 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 167 

Tuz, not far from the Turkish aerodrome. 
Next morning one of the batteries was ordered 
to reconnoitre as far as the town — pursuing a 
different route than that taken on the previous 
day. The commanding officer asked me to go 
along because of my knowledge of Arabic. 
The road followed the telegraph-lines, and part 
of the time that was the only way in which 
we could distinguish it from the surrounding 
country. Of course, the map was hopelessly 
incorrect. The villages were not even rightly 
named. A great deal of reconnoitring was 
called for, and in one village we had to knock 
the corner off a mud house to enable us to make 
a sharp right-angle turn. The natives were in 
pitiful condition. The Turks had not only 
taken all their crops, but even the grain that 
should be reserved to sow for the following 
year. The sheep had been killed in the lamb- 
ing season, so the flocks were sadly depleted. 
Such standing grain as there was left looked 
flourishing. The wheat waved above the cars. 
As we came out of a deep, broad ravine that 
had caused us much delay and difficulty, we 
caught sight of an attractive town situated on 
a steep, flat-topped hill. Upon drawing near, 
a fine-looking, white-bearded Arab rode up on 



168 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

a small gray mare. He said that he was the 
head man of the town ; that he hated the Turks, 
and would like to be of any assistance possible 
to us. I asked him if the enemy had evacuated 
Tauq. He replied that they had. I then asked 
him if he were positive about it. He offered 
to accompany us to prove it. The trail was 
so bad that we could not go fast, and he rode 
along beside us at a hand-gallop. 

When we came to the river in front of the 
town we found that it was impossible to get 
the armored cars across. The Turks had evi- 
dently fallen back, but not far, for they were 
dropping in shells with regularity. Our Arab 
friend told us that there was a bridge six 
miles up-stream, but it was too late for us to 
attempt it, and we turned back to Tuz after 
arranging with Sheikh Muttar to meet us in 
the morning. 

Next day we found him waiting for us as 
he had promised. With him were two hand- 
some Kurds. One of them had his wife perched 
behind him on the horse's crupper. Together 
they undertook to guide us up to the bridge. 
It was invariably difficult to find out from 
natives whether or not a road was passable 
for motor-cars. They were accustomed to 




The Kurd and his wife 




Sheik Muttar and the two Kurds 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 169 

think only in terms of horses or men, and could 
not realize that a bad washout might be im- 
passable for automobiles. Curiously enough, 
even those natives whom we had taken along 
with us on several reconnaissances as guides 
could not be trusted to give an opinion as to 
the feasibility of a proposed route. We ex- 
perienced no little trouble in following our 
guides to the bridge, although we afterward 
discovered a good road that cut off from the 
main trail about half-way between Tuz and 
Tauq. 

WTien we reached the bridge we found it to 
be a solid, well-built affair of recent construc- 
tion. The retreating Turks had tried to blow 
it up, but the most vital charges had failed to 
go off, so the damage done would not be suffi- 
ciently serious to stop our passage, after six 
or seven hours' preliminary work. We im- 
mediately sent back for the engineers, and put 
in the time while waiting by taking a mucli- 
needed bath in the rapids beneath one of the 
side arches. Every one who has wandered 
about in the waste places of the world can re- 
call certain swims that will always stand out 
in his memory. Perhaps they have been after 
a long and arduous hunt — ^perhaps at the end 



170 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

of a weary march. Our plunge in the Tauq 
Chai took its place among these. 

In the late afternoon we drove back to Tuz. 
Our camp there was anything but cheerful, 
for swarms of starving townsfolk hovered on 
the outskirts ready to pounce on any refuse 
that the men threw away. Discarded tin cans 
were cleaned out until the insides shone like 
mirrors. The men gave away everything they 
could possibly spare from their rations. As 
the news spread, the starving mountain Kurds 
began straggling in; and the gruesome band 
made one glad to leave camp early and return 
after dark. Our line of communication was so 
extended that it was impossible to attempt any 
relief work. 

The following morning we crossed over the 
bridge with little trouble, but ran into a lot of 
difficulty when we tried to make our way dowTi 
to the town. A couple of miles above the main 
town there is a small settlement grouped on a 
hill around the mosque of Zain El Abidin. 
The "mutabelli," or keeper of the shrine, is 
an important personage in the community, so 
when he appeared riding a richly caparisoned 
stallion and offered to accompany us to the 
town, we welcomed the opportunity of going 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 171 

in under such good auspices. We decided to 
take Seyid Mustapha, for that was his name, in 
one of the Ford vans with us. It was compara- 
tively easy to get the Hght car up over the pre- 
cipitous, rocky trail; and eventually one of the 
fighting cars succeeded in following. I was 
driving, with Mustapha beside me. In front 
of us on a white horse galloped the Seyid's 
attendant singing and shouting and proclaim- 
ing our arrival. We stopped at Mustapha' s 
house for a cup of coffee and a discussion of 
events. The information which we secured 
from him afterward proved unusually correct. 
I took him on with us to the town so that he 
could identify the head man and see that we 
got hold of the right people. Our reception 
was by no means cordial, although after we 
had talked a little and explained what we were 
after, the mayor became cheerful and expan- 
sive. He had a jovial, rotund face, covered 
in large part by a bushy beard, and would 
have done excellently as a model for Silenus. 
In the town were a handful of Turkish strag- 
glers — among them a stalwart Greek who 
spoke a little English. He said that he had 
been impressed into service by the Turks and 
was most anxious to join our forces. 



172 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

We found large stores of ammunition and 
other supplies, among them a wireless set. 
Wliat interested us most, I am afraid, was the 
quantity of chickens that we saw strutting 
about. A few of them and a good supply of 
eggs found their way to the automobiles in 
short order. We were always very particular 
about paying for whatever we took, and seeing 
that the men did likewise; our reputation 
went before us, and the native, as a rule, took 
it for granted that we would pay. It was up 
to the officers to see that the prices were not 
exorbitant. We always used Indian currency 
— ^the rupee and the anna. In normal times 
a rupee is about a third of a dollar. Through- 
out the occupied area Turkish currency also 
circulated, but the native invariably preferred 
to be paid in Indian. Curiously enough, even 
on entering towns like Tauq, we found the 
inhabitants eager for pajrment in rupees. I 
was told that in the money market in Bagh- 
dad a British advance would be heralded by a 
slump in Turkish exchange. Paper rupees 
were almost everywhere as readily accepted 
as silver, but paper liras and piasters were 
soon of so little value that they were no longer 
in circulation. 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 173 

When we got back to camp I found a wire 
informing me that I had been transferred to 
the American army, and ordering me to re- 
port at once to Baghdad to be sent to France. 
Major Thompson asked me if I would delay 
my return until the end of the advance. It 
was rumored that we would continue to push 
on and would attack Kirkuk. Many felt that 
the difficulty that was already being experi- 
enced in rationing us would preclude our 
thrusting farther. Still, I made up my mind 
that as long as the major wished it and would 
wire for permission I would stay a few days 
longer on the chance of the attack continuing. 

On the morning of the 3d we moved camp 
to the far side of the Tauq Chai bridge. When 
the tenders were unloaded I started back to 
bring up a supply of gasolene, with the purpose 
of making a dump in case we were called upon 
for a further advance. I was told that the 
nearest supply from which I could draw was 
at Umr Maidan; and the prospect of run- 
ning back, a distance of seventy miles, was not 
cheerful. VHien I got as far as Tuz I found 
a friend in charge of the dump there, and he 
let me draw what I wanted, so I turned back 
to try to get to the bridge by dark. One car 



174 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

after another got in trouble; first it was a 
puncture, then it was a tricky carburetor that 
refused to be put to rights; towing-ropes were 
called into requisition, but the best had been 
left behind, and those we had were rotted, 
and broke on every hill. Lastly a broken axle 
put one of the tenders definitely out of com- 
mission, and, of course, I had to wait behind 
with it. To add to everything, a veritable 
hurricane set in, with thunder and lightning 
and torrents of rain. The wind blew so hard 
that I thought the car would be toppled over. 
What made us more gloomy than anything else 
was the thought of all the dry river courses 
that would be roaring floods by morning, and 
probably hold up the ration supply indef- 
initely. 

Two days later the orders for which we had 
been waiting came through. We were to 
march upon a town called Taza Khurmatli, 
lying fifteen miles beyond Tauq and ten short 
of Kirkuk. If we met with no opposition there 
we were to push straight on. From all we 
could hear Taza was occupied only by cavalry, 
which would probably fall back without con- 
testing our advance. The cars had been out 
on reconnaissance near the town for the last 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 175 

two days, and had come in for artillery and 
machine-gun fire; but it was believed that the 
Turks had everything ready to withdraw their 
guns on our approach. 

In the gray light that preceded dawTi we 
saw shadowy columns of infantry and artillery 
and cavalry passing by our camp. The cos- 
tumes of the different regiments made a break 
in the drab monotony. The Mesopotamian 
Expeditionary Force was composed of varied 
components. Steel helmets could be worn only 
in winter. In many of the native regiments 
the British officers wore tasselled pugrees, 
and long tunics that were really shirts, and an 
adaption of the native custom of wearing the 
shirt-tails outside the trousers. The Gurkhas 
were supplied with pith helmets. It was gen- 
erally claimed that this was unnecessary, but 
the authorities felt that coming from a cold, 
high climate they would be as much affected 
by the Mesopotamian sun as were Europeans. 
The presence of the Indian troops brought 
about unusual additions to the dry "General 
Routine Orders" issued by general head- 
quarters. One of them, referring to a religious 
festival of the Sikhs, ran: 

*'The following cable message received from 



176 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

Sunder Signh Hagetha, Amritsar, addressed to 
Sikhs in Mesopotamian force: 

"To our most Dear Brothers now serving 
the Benign King-Emperor oversea, the chief 
Khalsa Dewan tenders hearty and sincere 
greetings on the auspicious Gurpurb of First 
Guru. You are upholding the name and fame 
of Gurupurb. Our hearts are with you and 
our prayers are that Satguru and Akalpurkh 
may ever be with you and lead you to victory 
and return home safe, after vanquishing the 
King-Emperor's foes, with honor and flying 
colors." 

The British Empire was well and loyally 
served by her Indian subjects, and by none 
more faithfully than the Sikhs. 

We let the column get well started before we 
shoved off in our cars. The trail was wide 
enough to pass without interfering; and long 
before we were in sight of Taza we had taken 
our place ahead. As was foreseen, the enemy 
evacuated the town with scarce a show of re- 
sistance. I set off to interview the local head 
man. In the spring all the upper Mesopotamian 
towns are inundated by flocks of storks, but 
I have never seen them in greater force than 
in Taza. On almost every housetop were a 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 177 

couple, throwing their heads back and clatter- 
ing their beaks in the odd way that gives 
them their onomatopoetic Arabic name of 
Lak-Lak. It sounded like the rattle of ma- 
chine-guns; so much so that on entering the 
village, for the first second I thought that the 
Turks were opening up on us. No native will 
molest a stork; to do so is considered to the 
last degree inauspicious. 

There was but little w^ater in the river run- 
ning by Taza, and we managed to get the cars 
through under their own power. A few miles 
farther on lay a broad watercourse, dry in the 
main, but with the centre channel too deep to 
negotiate, so there was nothing to be done 
without the help of the artillery horses. The 
Turks were shelling the vicinity of the cross- 
ing, so we drew back a short distance and sent 
word that we were held ud waiting for assis- 
tance to get us over. 

Once we had reached the far side we set out 
to pick our way round Kirkuk to get astride 
the road leading thence to Altun Kupri. This 
is the main route from Baghdad to Mosul, the 
chief city on the upper Tigris, across the river 
from the ruins of Nineveh. It was a difiicult 
task finding a way practicable for the cars, as 



178 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

the ground was still soft from the recent rains. 
It was impossible to keep defiladed from Turk- 
ish observation, but we did not supply them 
with much in the way of a target. At length 
we got round to the road, and started to ad- 
vance down it to Kirkuk. The town, in com- 
mon with so many others in that part of the 
country, is built on a hill. The Hamawand 
Kurds are inveterate raiders, and good forti- 
fications are needed to withstand them. As we 
came out upon the road we caught sight of our 
cavalry preparing to attack. The Turks were 
putting up a stout resistance, with darkness 
fast coming to their aid. After approaching 
close to the town, we were ordered to return to 
a deserted village for the night, prepared to go 
through in the early morning. 

The co-ordinates of the village were given, 
and we easily found it on the map; but it was 
quite another proposition to locate it physically. 
To add to our diflficulties, the sky clouded 
over and pitchy blackness settled down. It 
soon started to rain, so we felt that the best we 
could do was select as likely a spot as came to 
hand and wait for morning. I made up my 
mind that the front seat of a van, uncomfort- 
able and cramped as it was, would prove the 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 179 

best bed for the night. My estimate was 
correct, for at midnight the hght drizzle, that 
was scarcely more than a Scotch mist, turned 
into a wild, torrential downpour that all but 
washed away my companions. The water- 
proof flap that I had rigged withstood the on- 
slaughts of wind and rain in a fashion that 
was as gratifying as it was unexpected. The 
vivid flashes of lightning showed the little dry 
ravine beside us converted into a roaring, 
swirling torrent. The water was rushing past 
beneath the cars, half-way up to their hubs. 
A large field hospital had been set up close 
to the banks of the stream at Taza. We after- 
ward heard that the river had risen so rapidly 
that many of the tents and a few ambulances 
were washed away. 

By morning it had settled down into a 
steady, businesslike downpour. We found 
that we w^ere inextricably caught in among 
some low hills. There was not the slightest 
chance of moving the fighting cars; they were 
bogged down to the axle. There was no al- 
ternative other than to wait until the rain 
stopped and the mud dried. Fortunately our 
emergency rations were still untouched. 

Our infantry went over at dawn, and won 



180 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

through into the town. If it had not been for 
the rain we would have made some important 
captures. As it was, the Turks destroyed the 
bridge across the Hasa Su and retreated to 
Altun Kupri by the road on the farther bank. 
From a hill near by we watched everything, 
powerless to help in any way. 

At noon the sky unexpectedly cleared and 
the sun came out. We unloaded a Ford van, 
and with much pushing and no little spade 
work managed to get it down to a road running 
in the direction of Kirkuk. We found the 
surface equal to the light car, and slowly made 
our way to the outskirts of the town, with oc- 
casional halts where digging and shoving were 
required. We satisfied ourselves that, given a 
little sun, we could bring the armored cars out 
of their bog and through to the town. 

Next morning, in spite of the fact that more 
rain had fallen during the night, I set to work 
on my tenders, and at length succeeded in 
putting them all in Kirkuk. We were billeted 
in the citadel, a finely built, substantial affair, 
with a courtyard that we could turn into a 
good garage. The Turks had left in great haste, 
and, although they had attempted a whole- 
sale destruction of everything that they could 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 181 

not take, they had been only partially success- 
ful. In my room I found a quantity of pam- 
phlets describing the American army — ^with dia- 
grams of insignia, and pictures of fully equipped 
soldiers of the different branches of the service. 
There was also a map of the United States 
showing the population by States. The text 
was, of course, in Turkish and the printing 
excellently done. WTiat the purpose might be 
I could not make out. 

The wherefore of another booklet was more 
obvious. It was an illustrated account of al- 
leged British atrocities. Most of the pictures 
purported to have been taken in the Sudan, 
and showed decapitated negroes. Some I am 
convinced were pictures of the Armenian 
massacres that the Turks had themselves taken 
and in a thrifty moment put to this useful pur- 
pose. This pamphlet was printed at the press 
in Kirkuk. 

There were a number of excellent buildings 
—mainly workshops and armories, but the best 
was the hospital. The long corridors and deep 
windows of the wards looked very cool. An 
up-to-date impression was given by the in- 
dividual patient charts, with the headings for 
the different diagnoses printed in Turkish and 



182 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

French. The doctors were mainly Armenians. 
The occupants were all suffering from mal- 
nutrition, and there was a great deal of starva- 
tion in the town. 

I did not wish to return to Baghdad until I 
could be certain that we were not going to ad- 
vance upon Altun Kupri. The engineers 
patched up the bridge, and we took the cars 
over to the other side and went off on a recon- 
naissance to ascertain how strongly the town 
was being held. The long bridge from which 
it gets its name could easily be destroyed, and 
crossing over the river would be no light mat- 
ter. The surrounding mountains limited the 
avenue of attack. Altogether it would not be 
an easy nut to crack, and the Turks had evi- 
dently determined on a stand. What decided 
the army commander not to make any further 
attempt to advance was most probably the 
great length of the line of communications, 
and the recent floods had made worse con- 
ditions which were bad enough at the best. 
The ration supply had fallen very low, and it 
seemed impossible to hold even Kirkuk unless 
the rail-head could be advanced materially. 

I put in all my odd moments wandering about 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 183 

the bazaars. The day after the fall the mer- 
chants opened their booths and transacted 
business as usual. The population was com- 
posed of many races, chiefly Turcoman, Kurd, 
and Arab. There were also Armenians, Chal- 
deans, Syrians, and Jews. The latter were ex- 
ceedingly prosperous. Arabic and Kurdish 
and Turkish were all three spoken. Kirkuk 
is of very ancient origin — ^but of its early his- 
tory little is known. The natives point out a 
mound which they claim to be Daniel's tomb. 
Two others are showTi as belonging to Shad- 
rach and Meshech; that of the third of the 
famous trio has been lost. There are many 
artificial hills in the neighborhood, and doubt- 
less in course of time it will prove a fruitful 
hunting-ground for archaeologists. As far as 
I could learn no serious excavating has hitherto 
been undertaken in the vicinity. 

The bazaars were well filled with goods of 
every sort. I picked up one or two excellent 
rugs for very little, and a few odds and ends, 
dating from Seleucid times, that had been un- 
earthed by Arab laborers in their gardens or 
brick-kilns. There were some truck-gardens 
in the outskirts, and we traded fresh vegetables 
for some of our issue rations. There are few 



184 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

greater luxuries when one has been Hving on 
canned foods for a long time. I saw several 
ibex heads nailed up over the doors of houses. 
The owners told me that they were to be found 
in the near-by mountains, but were not plentiful. 
There is little large game left in Mesopotamia, 
and that mainly in the mountains. I once 
saw a striped hyena. It is a nocturnal animal, 
and they may be common, although I never 
came across but the one, which I caught sight 
of slinking among the ruins of Istabulat, south 
of Samarra, one evening when I was riding back 
to camp. Gazelle were fairly numerous, and 
we occasionally shot one for venison. It was 
on the plains between Kizil Robat and Kara 
Tepe that I saw the largest bands. Judging 
from ancient bas-reliefs lions must at one time 
have been very plentiful. In the forties of the 
last century Sir Henry Layard speaks of com- 
ing across them frequently in the hill country; 
and later still, in the early eighties, a fellow 
countryman, Mr. Fogg, in his Land of the 
Arabian Nights, mentions that the English 
captain of a river steamer had recently killed 
four lions, shooting from the deck of his boat. 
Rousseau speaks of meeting, near Hit, a man 
who had been badly mauled by a lion, and 



ON THE PERSIAN FRONT 185 

was going to town to have his wounds cared 
for. Leopards and bears are to be met with 
in the higher mountain regions, and wild boars 
are common in many districts. They inhabit 
the thickets along the river-banks, in country 
that would permit of much sound sport in 
the shape of pig-sticking. 

Game-birds are found in abundance; both 
greater and lesser bustard; black and gray 
partridges, quail, geese, duck, and snipe. A 
week's leave could be made provide good 
shooting and a welcome addition to the usual 
fare when the wanderer returned. Every sort 
of shotgun was requisitioned, from antiquated 
muzzle-loaders bought in the bazaar to the 
most modern creations of Purdy sent out from 
India by parcel-post. 

After waiting a few days further, to be cer- 
tain that an attack would not be unexpectedly 
ordered, I set out on my return trip to Bagh- 
dad. The river at Taza was still up, but I bor- 
rowed six mules from an accommodating gal- 
loping ambulance, and pulled the car across. 
We went by way of Kifri, a clean, stone-built 
town that we found all but empty. The food 
situation had become so critical that the in- 
habitants had drifted ofiF, some to our lines, 



186 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

others to Persia, and still others to Kirkuk and 
Mosul. Near Kifri are some coal-mines about 
which we had heard much. It is the only place 
in the country where coal is worked, and we 
were hoping that we might put it to good use. 
Our experts, however, reported that it was 
of very poor quality and worth practically 
nothing. 



VIII 

Back Through Palestine 



VIII 

BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 

Several days later I embarked at Baghdad 
on one of the river boats. I took Yusuf with 
me to Busra to put me aboard the transport 
for Egypt. It was the first time he had ever 
been that far down-stream, and he showed a 
fine contempt for everything he saw, compar- 
ing it in most disparaging terms to his own 
desolate native town of Samarra. The cheap- 
ness, variety, and plenty of the food in the 
bazaars of Busra were the only things that he 
allow^ed in any way to impress him. 

I w^as fortunate enough to run into some 
old friends, and through one of them met 
General Sutton, who most kindly and oppor- 
tunely rescued me from the dreary "Rest- 
Camp" and took me to his house. Wliile I 
was waiting for a chance to get a place on a 
transport, he one morning asked me to go with 
him to Zobeir, where he was to dedicate a hos- 
pital. Zobeir is a desert town of ten thousand 
or so inhabitants, situated fifteen miles inland 

189 



190 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

from Busra. The climate is supposed to be 
more healthful, and many of the rich and im- 
portant residents of the river town have houses 
there to which they retire during the summer 
months. To an outsider any comparison 
would seem only a refinement of degrees of 
suffocation. The heat of all the coastal towns 
of the Persian Gulf is terrific. 

Zobeir is a desert town, with its ideals and 
feelings true to the inheritance of the tribes- 
men. It is a market for the caravans of central 
Arabia. A good idea of the Turkish feeling to- 
ward it may be gathered from the fact that 
the inhabitants were exempt from military ser- 
vice. This was a clear admission on the part 
of the Turk that he could not cope with the 
situation, and thought it wisest not to attempt 
something which he had no hope of putting 
through. It was, therefore, a great triumph 
for the British and a sure wedge into the con- 
fidence of the desert folk when the hospital 
was opened, for any people that can intro- 
duce so marked an innovation among the hide- 
bound desert communities must have won 
their confidence and respect in a remarkable de- 
gree. Ibrahim, the hereditary Sheikh of Zobeir, 
himself contributed largely to the fund for 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 191 

the endowment. It was arranged that Doctor 
Borrie, who among his other duties ran the 
civil hospital at Busra, should periodically in- 
clude Zobeir in his rounds. The Sheikh showed 
us over the building. It was cool, comfort- 
able, and very sanitary. The Indian who was 
to be resident physician had every appear- 
ance of intelligence and proficiency. Old 
Ibrahim gave us a large banquet of the or- 
thodox type. There was a sheep roasted whole, 
and dishes of every sort of meat and vegetable 
marshalled upon the table, which fairly groaned 
beneath their weight. We had innumerable 
speeches. General Sutton made an excellent 
address, which an interpreter translated into 
Arabic. Our Arabian hosts were long-winded, 
and the recognized local orator was so classical 
in his phrases and forms and tenses that it was 
impossible to do more than get the general 
drift of what he said. Luckily I had in my 
pocket a copy of the Lusiads, which I surrep- 
titiously read when the speeches became hope- 
lessly long drawn out. 

I was allotted space on a British India/boat, 
the Torrilla, that was to take to Egypt afield 
artillery regiment of the Third Division. As 
we dropped down-stream and I watched a 



192 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

disconsolate Yusuf standing on the dock, I 
felt that another chapter had closed — ^an in- 
teresting one at that. I was not left long to 
muse on what the next would bring forth be- 
fore there was a cry of "fire"; and from where 
I was standing in the smoking-room I could 
see, through the open hatchways, the soldiers 
hurrying about below decks. As the ship was 
well ballasted with ammunition, anything that 
happened would take place quickly, and only 
those on the spot could hope to control events, 
so I stayed where I was. A few minutes later 
the fire was reported out. 

The long two weeks' trip through the Per- 
sian Gulf and round to the Red Sea was monot- 
onously peaceful. Being "unattached," I had 
no regular duties. Occasionally I attended 
"stables," and wandered around the horse 
lines. The great heat below decks had far less 
effect upon the horses than would be supposed. 
Of course, they were well cared for, and many 
were seasoned veterans that had taken more 
than one long sea voyage. If I am not mis- 
taken, only one was lost on the trip. 

Most of the time I lay back in my rhoorkhee 
chair and read whatever I could find in the 
ship's library. The wireless broke down a few 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 193 

days after we left Busra, so we got no news 
whatever of the outer world, and soon ceased 
to speculate on what might be happening in 
France. 

At length, on the morning of June 4, we 
dropped anchor in Suez harbor. We had 
hoped that the Torrilla would run through the 
canal to Port Said, but the disembarkation 
officer told us that we were all to be unloaded 
at Suez and proceed by rail. When I reached 
Alexandria I learned that a convoy had just 
sailed and there would not be another for two 
weeks at earliest. Sir Reginald Wingate, who 
had long been a family friend, was the British 
High Commissioner. Lady Wingate and he 
with the utmost hospitality insisted on my 
moving out to the residency to w^ait for my 
sailing. 

When I left for Mesopotamia Lord Derby 
had given me a letter to General Allenby 
w^hich I had never had an opportunity to pre- 
sent. Sir Reginald suggested that I could not 
do better than make use of this enforced delay 
by going up to Palestine. The railway was 
already running to Jerusalem and you could 
go straight through from Cairo with but one 
change. At Kantara you crossed the canal 



194 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

and entered the military zone. Leaving there 
at half past eleven in the evening the train 
reached Ludd, which was general headquar- 
ters, at seven the following morning. 

Every one that I had ever met who knew 
General Allenby was wildly enthusiastic about 
him, and you had only to be with him a few 
minutes to realize how thoroughly justified 
their enthusiasm was. He represented the 
very highest type of the British soldier, and 
more need not be said. On the morning on 
which I arrived an attack was in progress and 
we could hear the drumming of the guns. 
The commander-in-chief placed a car at my 
disposal and I went around visiting old friends 
that I had made in Mesopotamia or still 
earlier in England, before the war. Among the 
latter was Colonel Ronald Storrs, the military 
governor of Jerusalem. With him I spent sev- 
eral days. Life in the Holy City seemed but 
little changed by the war. There was an in- 
teresting innovation in the Church of the Na- 
tivity at Bethlehem. The different Christian 
religious sects, in particular the Greek and 
Latin Catholics, were prone to come to blows 
in the church, and bloodshed and death had 
more than once been the result. To obviate 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 195 

this it had been the custom to have a regular 
reHef of Turkish soldiers stationed in the 
church. Their place was now taken by British 
and French and Italians. Each nationality in 
rotation furnished the guard for a day. At 
the festival of the distribution of the Sacred 
Fire from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in 
Jerusalem ,there were usually a number of 
accidents caused by the anxiety to reach the 
portal whence the fire was given out. The 
commander-in-chief particularly complimented 
Colonel Storrs upon the orderly way in which 
this ceremony was conducted under his regime. 
The population of Jerusalem is exceedingly 
mixed — and the percentage of fanatics is of 
course disproportionately large. There are 
many groups that have been gathered together 
and brought out to the Holy Land with dis- 
tinctly unusual purposes. One such always 
had an empty seat at their table and con- 
fidently expected that Christ would some day 
appear to occupy it. The long-haired Russian 
and Polish Jews with their felt hats and shabby 
frock coats were to be met with everywhere. 
In the street where the Jews meet to lament 
the departed glory of Jerusalem an incongru- 
ous and ludicrous element was added by a few 



196 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

Jews, their bowed heads covered with ancient 
derby hats, wailing with undefeated zeal. 

It is a mournful fact that the one really fine 
building in Jerusalem should be the Mosque 
of Omar — the famous "Dome of the Rock." 
This is built on the legendary site of the temple 
of Solomon, and the mosaics lining the inside 
of the dome are the most beautiful I have ever 
seen. The simplicity is what is really most 
felt, doubly so because the Christian holy 
places are garish and tawdry, with tin-foil 
and flowers and ornate carving. It is to be 
hoped that the Christians will some day unite 
and clean out all the dreary offerings and 
knickknacks that clutter the Church of the 
Holy Sepulchre. Moslems hold the Mosque 
of Omar second in sanctity only to the great 
mosque in the holy city of Mecca. It is curi- 
ous, therefore, that they should not object to 
Christians entering it. Mohammedans enter 
barefoot, but we fastened large yellow slippers 
over our shoes, and that was regarded as filling 
all requirements. Storrs pointed out to me 
that it was quite unnecessary to remove our 
hats, for that is not a sign of respect with 
Moslems, and they keep on their red fezzes. 
The mosque was built by the Caliph Abd el 




A street in Jerusalem 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 197 

Melek, about fifty years after Omar had cap- 
tured Jerusalem in 636 A. D. Many of the 
stones used in building it came from the tem- 
ple of Jupiter. In the centre lies the famous 
rock, some sixty feet in diameter, and rising 
six or seven feet above the floor of the mosque. 
To Mohammedans it is more sacred than any- 
thing else in the world save the Black Stone 
at Mecca. Tradition says that it was here 
that Abraham and Melchizedek sacrificed to 
Jehovah, and Abraham brought Isaac as an 
offering. Scientists find grounds for the belief 
that it was the altar of the temple in the 
traces of a channel for carrying off the blood 
of the victims. The Crusaders believed the 
mosque to be the original temple of Solomon, 
and, according to their own reports, rededi- 
cated it with the massacre of more than ten 
thousand Moslems who had fled thither for 
refuge. The wrought-iron screen that they 
placed around the rock still remains. The 
cavern below is the traditional place of wor- 
ship of many of the great characters of the 
Old Testament, such as David and Solomon 
and Elijah. From it Mohammed made his 
night journey to heaven, borne on his steed 
El Burak. In the floor of the cavern is an 



198 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

opening covered with a slab of stone, and said 
to go down to the centre of the world and be 
a medium for communicating with the souls 
of the departed. 

The military governor has been at work to 
better the sanitary conditions in Jerusalem. 
Hitherto the only water used by the townsfolk 
had been the rain-water which they gathered in 
tanks. Some years ago it was proposed to 
bring water to the city in pipes, some of which 
were already laid before the inhabitants decided 
that such an innovation could not be tolerated. 
The British have put in a pipe-line, and oddly 
enough it runs to the same reservoir whence 
Pontius Pilate started to bring water by means 
of an aqueduct. They have also built some 
excellent roads through the surrounding hills. 
Here, as in Mesopotamia, one was struck by 
the permanent nature of the improvements 
that are being made. Even to people absorbed 
in their own jealousies and rivalries the advan- 
tages that they were deriving from their 
liberation from Turkish rule must have been 
exceedingly apparent. 

The situation in Palestine differed in many 
ways from that in Mesopotamia, but in none 
more markedly than in the benefits derived 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 199 

from the propinquity of Egypt. Occasional 
leaves were granted to Cairo and Alexandria 
and they afforded the relaxation of a complete 
change of surroundings. I have never seen 
Cairo gayer. Shepherd's Hotel was open and 
crowded — ^and the dances as pleasant as any 
that could be given in London. The beaches 
at Ramleh, near Alexandria, were bright with 
crowds of bathers, and the change afforded the 
"men from up the line" must have proved of 
inestimable value in keeping the army con- 
tented. There were beaches especially re- 
served for non-commissioned officers and others 
for the privates — ^while in Cairo sightseeing 
tours were made to the pyramids and what the 
guide-books describe as "other points of in- 
terest." 

When I left Mesopotamia I made up my 
mind that there was one man in Palestine whom 
I would use every effort to see if I were held 
over waiting for a sailing. This man was 
Major A. B. Paterson, known to every Aus- 
tralian as "Banjo" Paterson. His two most 
widely read books are The Man from Snowy 
River and Rio Grande's Last Race; both had 
been for years companions of the entire fam- 
ily at home and sources for daily quotations, 



200 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

so I had always hoped to some day meet their 
author. I knew that he had fought in the 
South African War, and I heard that he was 
with the AustraHan forces in Palestine. As 
soon as I landed I asked every Australian 
oflBcer that I met where Major Paterson was, 
for locating an individual member of an ex- 
peditionary force, no matter how well known he 
may be, is not always easy. Every one knew 
him. I remember well when I inquired at the 
Australian headquarters in Cairo how the man 
I asked turned to a comrade and said: "Say, 
where's 'Banjo' now.^ He's at Moascar, isn't 
he.^" Whether they had ever met him per- 
sonally or not he was "Banjo" to one and all. 

On my return to Alexandria I stopped at 
Moascar, which was the main depot of the 
Australian Remount Service, and there I found 
him. He is a man of about sixty, with long 
mustaches and strong aquiline features — 
very like the type of American plainsman that 
Frederic Remington so well portrayed. He 
has lived everything that he has written. At 
different periods of his life he has dived for 
pearls in the islands, herded sheep, broken 
broncos, and known every chance and change 
of Australian station life. The Australians told 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 201 

me that when he was at his prime he was re- 
garded as the best rider in AustraHa. A recent 
feat about which I heard much mention was 
when he drove three hundred mules straight 
through Cairo without losing a single ani- 
mal, conclusively proving his argument against 
those who had contested that such a thing 
could not be done. Although he has often been 
in England, Major Paterson has never come 
to the United States. He told me that among 
American writers he cared most for the works 
of Joel Chandler Harris and 0. Henry — ^an 
odd combination ! 

While in Egypt I met a man about whom I 
had heard much, a man whose career was un- 
surpassed in interest and in the amount ac- 
complished by the individual. Before the war 
Colonel Lawrence was engaged in archaeological 
research under Professor Hogarth of Oxford 
University. Their most important work was 
in connection with the excavation of a buried 
city in Palestine. At the outbreak of hostil- 
ities Professor Hogarth joined the Naval In- 
telligence and rendered invaluable services to 
the Egyptian Expeditionary Forces. Lawrence 
had an excellent grounding in Arabic and de- 
cided to try to organize the desert tribes into 



202 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

bands that would raid the Turkish outposts 
and smash their Hues of communication. He 
estabhshed a body-guard of reckless semiout- 
laws, men that in the old days in our West 
would have been known as "bad men." They 
became devoted to him and he felt that he 
could count upon their remaining faithful 
should any of the tribes with which he was 
raiding meditate treache^^^ He dressed in 
Arab costume, but as a whole made no effort 
to conceal his nationality. His method con- 
sisted in leading a tribe off on a wild foray to 
break the railway, blow up bridges, and carry 
off the Turkish supplies. Swooping down from 
out the open desert like hawks, they would 
strike once and be off before the Turks could 
collect themselves. Lawrence explained that 
he had to succeed, for if he failed to carry off 
any booty, his reputation among the tribes- 
men was dead — and no one would follow him 
thereafter. \Miat he found hardest on these 
raids was killing the wounded — ^but the dread 
of falling into the hands of the Turks was so 
great that before starting it was necessary to 
make a compact to kill all that were too badly 
injured to be carried away on the camels. 
The Turks offered for Colonel Lawrence's cap- 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 203 

ture a reward of ten thousand pounds if dead 
and twenty thousand pounds if ahve. His 
added value in the latter condition was due 
to the benefit that the enemy expected to de- 
rive from his public execution. No one who 
has not tried it can realize what a long ride on 
a camel means, and although Lawrence was 
eager to take with him an Englishman who 
would know the best methods of blowing up 
bridges and buildings, he could never find any 
one who was able to stand the strain of a long 
journey on camel back. 

Lawrence told me that he couldn't last 
much longer, things had broken altogether too 
well for him, and they could not continue to 
do so. Scarcely more than thirty years of age, 
with a clean-shaven, boyish face, short and slen- 
der in build, if one met him casually among a lot 
of other officers it would not have been easy to 
single him out as the great power among the 
Arabs that he on every occasion proved him- 
self to be. Lawrence always greatly admired 
the Arabs — ^appreciating their many-sidedness 
— ^their virility — ^their ferocity — their intellect 
and their sensitiveness. I remember well one 
of the stories which he told me. It was, I 
believe, when he was on a long raid in the 



204 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

course of which he went right Into the out- 
skirts of Damascus — then miles behind the 
Turkish Hues. They halted at a ruined palace 
in the desert. The Arabs led him through the 
various rooms, explaining that each was scented 
with a different perfume. Although Lawrence 
could smell nothing, they claimed that one room 
had the odor of ambergris — another of roses — 
and a third of jasmine; — ^at length they came to 
a large and particularly ruinous room. "This," 
they said, "has the finest scent of all — ^the smell 
of the wind and the sun." I last saw Colonel 
Lawrence in Paris, whither he had brought the 
son of the King of the Hedjaz to attend the 
Peace Conference. 

When I got back to Alexandria I found that 
the sailing of the convoy had been still fur- 
ther delayed. Three vessels out of the last 
one to leave had been sunk, involving a con- 
siderable loss of life. The channel leading 
from the harbor out to sea is narrow and must 
be followed well beyond the entrance, so that 
the submarines had an excellent chance to lay 
in wait for outgoing boats. The greatest 
secrecy was observed with regard to the date 
of leaving and destination — and of course 
troops were embarked and held in the harbor 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 205 

for several days so as to avoid as far as pos- 
sible any notice being given to the lurking 
enemy by spies on shore. 

The transports were filled with units that 
were being hurried off to stem the German tide 
in France, so casual officers were placed on the 
accompanying destroyers and cruisers. I was 
allotted to a little Japanese destroyer, the Umi. 
She was of only about six hundred and fifty 
tons burden, for this class of boat in the Japa- 
nese navy is far smaller than in ours. She was 
as neat as a pin, as were also the crew. The 
officers were most friendly and did everything 
possible to make things comfortable for a 
landsman in their limited quarters. The first 
meal on board we all used knives and forks, but 
thereafter they were only supplied to me, while 
the Japanese fell back upon their chop-sticks. 
It was a never-failing source of interest to 
watch their skill in eating under the most 
difficult circumstances. One morning when the 
boat was dancing about even more than usual, 
I came into breakfast to find the steward 
bringing in some rather underdone fried eggs, 
and thought that at last I would see the ship's 
officers stumped in the use of their chop-sticks. 
Not a bit of it; they had disposed of the eggs 



206 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

in the most unsurpassed manner and were off 
to their duties before I myself had finished 
eating. 

We left Alexandria with an escort of aero- 
planes to see us safely started, while an obser- 
vation balloon made fast to a cruiser accom- 
panied us on the first part of our journey. The 
precautions were not in vain, for two subma- 
rines were sighted a short time after we cleared 
the harbor. The traditional Japanese efficiency 
was well borne out by the speed with which 
our crew prepared for action. Every member 
was in his appointed place and the guns were 
stripped for action in an incredibly short time 
after the warning signal. It was when we were 
nearing the shores of Italy that I had best op- 
portunity to see the destroyers at work. We 
sighted a submarine which let fly at one of the 
troopers — ^the torpedo passing its bow and 
barely missing the boat beyond it. Quick as a 
flash the Japanese were after it — swerving in 
and out like terriers chasing a rat, and let- 
ting drive as long as it was visible. We cast 
around for the better part of an hour, drop- 
ping overboard depth charges which shook the 
little craft as the explosion sent great fun- 
nels of water aloft. The familiar harbor of 



BACK THROUGH PALESTINE 207 

Taranto was a welcome sight when we at 
length herded our charges in through the nar- 
row entrance and swung alongside the wharf 
where the destroyers were to take in a supply 
of fuel preparatory to starting out again on 
their interminable and arduous task. 



IX 

With the First Division in France 
and Germany 



IX 

WITH THE FIRST DIVISION IN 
FRANCE AND GERIVIANY 



My transfer to the American army appointed 
me as captain of field artillery instead of 
infantry, as I had wished. Just how the mis- 
take occurred I never determined, but once 
in the field artillery I found that to shift back 
would take an uncertain length of time, and 
that even after it was effected I would be 
obliged to take a course at some school before 
going up to the line. It therefore seemed ad- 
visable to go immediately, as instructed, to the 
artillery school at Saumur. The management 
was half French and half American. Colonel 
MacDonald and Colonel Cross were the Amer- 
icans in charge, and the high reputation of the 
school bore testimony to their efficiency. It 
was the intention of headquarters gradually 
to replace all the French instructors with Amer- 
icans, but when I was there the former pre- 

211 



212 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

dominated. It was of course necessary to 
wait until our officers had learned by actual 
experience the use of the French guns with 
which our army was supplied. When men are 
being taught what to do in combat conditions 
they apply themselves more attentively and 
absorb far more when they feel that the 
officer teaching them has had to test, under 
enemy fire, the theories he is expounding. 
The school was for both officers and candi- 
dates. The latter were generally chosen from 
among the non-commissioned officers serving 
at the front; I afterward sent men down from 
my battery. The first part of the course was 
difficult for those who had either never had 
much mathematical training or had had it so 
long ago that they were hopelessly out of prac- 
tice. A number of excellent sergeants and 
corporals did not have the necessary grounding 
to enable them to pass the examinations. They 
should never have been sent, for it merely put 
them in an awkward and humiliating position 
— although no stigma could possibly be at- 
tached to them for having failed. 

The French officer commanding the field 
work was Major de Caraman. His long and 
distinguished service in the front lines, com- 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 213 

bined with his initiative and ever-ready tact, 
made him an invaluable agent in welding the 
ideas and methods of France and America. 
His house was always filled with Americans, 
and how much his hospitality meant to those 
whose ties were across the ocean must have 
been experienced to be appreciated. The 
homes of France were ever thrown open to us, 
and the sincere and simple good-will with which 
we were received has put us under a lasting 
debt which we should be only too glad to 
cherish and acknowledge. 

Saumur is a delightful old town in the heart 
of the chateau country. The river Loire runs 
through it, and along the banks are the caves 
in some of which have been found the paint- 
ings made by prehistoric man picturing the 
beasts with which he struggled for supremacy 
in the dim dark ages. The same caves are 
many of them inhabited, and their owners may 
well look with scorn upon the chateaux and 
baronial castles of whose antiquity it is custom- 
ary to boast. There is an impressive castle 
built on a hill dominating the town, and in one 
of the churches is hung an array of tapestries 
of unsurpassed color and design. The country 
round about invited rambling, and the excel- 



214 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

lent roads made it easy; particularly delight- 
ful were the strolls along the river-banks, where 
patient fisherfolk of every sex and age sat un- 
perturbed by the fact that they never seemed 
to catch anything. One old lady with a sun- 
bonnet was always to be seen seated on a 
three-legged stool in the same corner amid the 
rocks. She had a rusty black umbrella which 
she would open when the rays of the sun be- 
came too searching. 

The buildings which were provided for the 
artillery course had formerly been used by the 
cavalry school, probably the best known in 
the world. Before the war army officers of 
every important nation in the Occident and 
Orient were sent by their governments to fol- 
low the course and learn the method of in- 
struction. My old friend Fitzhugh Lee was 
one of those sent by the United States, and I 
found his record as a horseman still alive and 
fresh in the memory of many of the townspeo- 
ple. 

Soon after the termination of my period of 
instruction I was in command of C Battery 
of the Seventh Field Artillery in the Argonne 
fighting. I was standing one morning in the 
desolate, shell-ridden town of Landres et St. 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 215 

George watching a column of *' dough-boys" 
coming up the road; at their head Hmped a 
battered Dodge car, and as it neared me I 
recognized my elder brother Ted, sitting on the 
back seat in deep discussion with his adjutant. 
I had beheved him to be safely at the staff school 
in Langres recuperating from a wound, but he 
had been offered the chance to come up in 
command of his old regiment, the Twenty- 
Sixth, and although registered as only *'good 
for light duty in the service of supply," he had 
made his way back to the division. While we 
were talking another car came up and out from 
it jumped my brother-in-law, Colonel Richard 
Derby — ^at that time division surgeon of the 
Second Division. We were the only three 
members of the family left in active service 
since my brother Quentin, the aviator, was 
brought down over the enemy lines, and 
Archie, severely wounded in leg and arm, had 
been evacuated to the United States. I well 
remember how once when Colonel Derby in- 
troduced me to General Lejeune, who was 
commanding his division, the general, instead 
of making some remark about my father, said : 
*'I shall always be glad to meet a relative of a 
man with Colonel Derby's record." 



216 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

On the 11th of November we had just 
returned to our original sector after attacking 
Sedan. None of us placed much confidence in 
an armistice being signed. We felt that the 
German would never accept the terms, but 
were confident that by late spring or early sum- 
mer we would be able to bring about an un- 
conditional surrender. "VMien the firing ceased 
and the news came through that the enemy had 
capitulated, there was no great show of ex- 
citement. We were all too weary to be much 
stirred by anything that could occur. For the 
past two weeks we had been switched hither 
and yon, with little sleep and less food, and a 
constant decrease in our personnel and horses 
that was never entirely made good but grew 
steadily more serious. The only bursts of 
enthusiasm that I heard were occasioned by 
the automobile trucks and staff cars passing 
by after dark with their headlights blazing. 
The joyous shouts of "Lights out!" testi- 
fied that the reign of darkness was over. Soon 
the men began building fires and gathering 
about them, calling "Lights out!" as each 
new blaze started — a joke which seemed a 
never-failing source of amusement. 

We heard that we were to march into Ger- 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 217 

many in the wake of the evacuating army and 
occupy one of the bridge-heads. All this came 
through in vague and unconfirmed form, but 
in a few days we were hauled back out of the 
line to a desolate mass of ruins which had once 
been the village of Bantheville. We were told 
that we would have five days here, during 
which we would be reoutfitted in every par- 
ticular. Our horses were in fearful shape — 
constant work in the rain and mud with very 
meagre allowance of fodder had worn down the 
toughest old campaigners among them. Dur- 
ing the weary, endless night march on Sedan I 
often saw two horses leaning against each other 
in utter exhaustion — as if it were by that means 
alone that they kept on their feet. We were 
told to indent for everything that we needed 
to make our batteries complete as prescribed 
in the organization charts, but we followed in- 
structions without any very blind faith in re- 
sults — ^nor did our lack of trust prove unwar- 
ranted, for we got practically nothing for which 
we had applied. 

There were some colored troops near by en- 
gaged in repairing the roads, and a number of 
us determined to get up a quartet to sing for 
the men. We went to where the negroes had 



218 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

built themselves shelters from corrugated-iron 
sheets and miscellaneous bits of wreckage from 
the town. We collected three quarters of our 
quartet and were directed to the mess-shack 
for the fourth. As we approached I could hear 
sounds of altercation and a voice that we 
placed immediately as that of our quarry arose 
in indignant warning: "If yo' doan' leggo that 
mess-kit I'll lay a barrage down on yo' !" A 
platform was improvised near a blazing fire of 
pine boards and we had some excellent clog- 
ging and singing. The big basso had evidently 
a strong feeling for his steel helmet, and it un- 
doubtedly added to his picturesqueness — set- 
ting off his features with his teeth and eyes 
gleaming in the firelight. 

On the evening of the second day orders 
came fo move off on the following morning. 
We were obliged to discard much material, for 
although the two days' rest and food had dis- 
tinctly helped out the horse situation, we had 
many animals that could barely drag them- 
selves along, much less a loaded caisson, and 
our instructions were to on no account salvage 
ammunition. We could spare but one horse 
for riding — ^my little mare — and she was no 
use for pulling. She was a wise little animal 
with excellent gaits and great endurance. We 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 219 

were forced to leave behind another mare that 
I had ridden a good deal on reconnaissances, 
and that used to amuse me by her unalterable 
determination to stick to cover. It was al- 
most impossible to get her to cut across a 
field; she preferred to skirt the woods and had 
no intention of exposing herself on any sky-line. 
In spite of her caution it was on account of 
wounds that she had eventually to be aban- 
doned. I trust that the salvage parties found 
her and that she is now reaping the reward of 
her foresight. 

We were a sorry -looking outfit as we marched 
away from Bantheville. My lieutenants had 
lost their bedding-rolls and extra clothes long 
since — ^as every one did, for it was impossible 
to keep your belongings with you — ^and al- 
though authorized dumps were provided and 
we were told that anything left behind would 
be cared for, we would be moved to another 
sector without a chance to collect our excess 
and practically everything would have disap- 
peared by the time the opportunity came to 
visit the cache. But although the horses and 
accoutrements were in bad shape, the men were 
fit for any task, and more than ready to take on 
whatever situation might arise. 

Our destination was Malancourt, no great 



WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

distance away, but the roads were so jammed 
with traffic that it was long after dark before 
we reached the bleak, wind-swept hillside that 
had been allotted to us. It was bitterly cold 
and we groped about among the shattered 
barbed-wire entanglements searching for wood 
to light a fire. There was no difficulty in find- 
ing shell-craters in which to sleep — ^the ground 
was so pockmarked with them that it seemed 
impossible that it could have been done by 
human agency. 

This country had been an "active" area 
during practically all the war, and the towns 
had been battered and beaten down first by 
the Boche and then by the French, and lately 
we ourselves had taken a hand in the further 
demolition of the ruins. Many a village was 
recognizable from the encompassing waste 
only by the sign-board stuck in a mound an- 
nouncing its name. The next day's march took 
us through Esne, Montzeville, and Bethain- 
ville, and on down to the Verdun-Paris high- 
way. We passed by historic "Dead Man*s 
Hill," and not far from there we saw the mute 
reminders of an attack that brought the whole 
scene vividly back. There were nine or ten 
tanks, of types varying from the little Renault 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 221 

to the powerful battleship sort. All had been 
halted by direct hits, some while still far from 
their objective, others after they had reached 
the wire entanglements, and there was one 
that was already astride of the first-line 
trench. The continual sight of ruined towns 
and desolated countryside becomes very op- 
pressive, and it was a relief when we began to 
pass through villages in which many of the 
houses were still left standing; it seemed like 
coming into a new world. 

At ten in the evening I got the battery into 
Balaicourt. A strong wind was blowing and 
the cold was intense, so I set off to try to find 
billets for the men where they could be at 
least partly sheltered. The town was all but 
deserted by its inhabitants, and we managed 
to provide every one with some degree of 
cover. Getting back into billets is particularly 
welcome in very cold or rainy weather, and we 
all were glad to be held over a day on the 
wholly mythical plea of refitting. Although the 
time would not be sufficient to make any ap- 
preciable effort in the way of cleaning harness 
or materiel, the men could at any rate heat 
water to wash their clothes and themselves. 

The next day's march we regarded as our 



222 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

first in the advance into Germany to which 
we had so long looked forward. We found 
the great Verdun highway which had played 
such an important part in the defense that 
broke the back of the Hun to be in excellent 
shape and a pleasant change from the shell- 
pitted roads to which we had become accus- 
tomed. It was not without a thrill that I rode, 
at the head of my battery, through the massive 
south gate of Verdun, and followed the winding 
streets of the old city through to the opposite 
portal. Before we had gone many miles the 
road crossed a portion of the far-famed Hin- 
denburg line which had here remained intact 
until evacuated by the Boche a few days pre- 
viously under the terms of the armistice. 

We made a short halt where a negro en- 
gineer regiment was at work making the road 
passable. A most hospitable officer strolled 
up and asked if I wanted anything to eat, which 
when you are in the army may be classified 
with Goldberg's "foolish questions." A sturdy 
coal-black cook brought me soup and roast beef 
and coffee, and never have I appreciated the 
culinary arts of the finest French chef as I did 
that meal, for the food had been cooked, not 
merely thrown into one of the tureens of a 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 223 

rolling kitchen, which was as much as we had 
recently been able to hope for. 

The negro cook looked as if he would have 
been able to emulate his French confrere of 
whom Major de Caraman told me. The 
Frenchman was on his way to an outpost with 
a steaming caldron of soup. He must have 
lost the way, for he unexpectedly found him- 
self confronted by a German who ordered him 
to surrender. For reply the cook slammed 
the soup-dish over his adversary's head and 
marched him back a prisoner. His prowess 
was rewarded with a Croix de Guerre. 

It was interesting to see the German system 
of defense when it was still intact and had not 
been shattered by our artillery preparation as 
it was when taken in an attack. The wire 
entanglements were miles in depth, and the 
great trees by the roadside were mined. This 
was done by cutting a groove three or four 
inches broad and of an equal depth and filling 
it with packages of explosive. I suppose the 
purpose was to block the road in case of re- 
treat. Only a few of the mines had been set 
off. 

Passing through several towns that no longer 
existed we came to Etain, where many build- 



224 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

ings were still standing though completely 
gutted. The cellars had been converted into 
dugouts with passages and ramifications added. 
We were billeted in some German huts on the 
outskirts. They were well dug in and com- 
fortably fitted out, so we were ready to stay 
over a few days, as we had been told we should, 
but at midnight orders were sent round to be 
prepared to march out early. 

The country was lovely and gave little sign 
of the Boche occupation except that it was 
totally deserted and when we passed through 
villages all the signs were in German. There 
was but little originality displayed in naming 
the streets — ^you could be sure that you would 
find a Hindenburg Strasse and a Kronprinz 
Strasse, and there was usually one called after 
the Kaiser. The mile-posts at the crossroads 
had been mostly replaced, but occasionally we 
found battered metal plaques of the Automo- 
bile Touring Club of France. Ever since we 
left Verdun we had been meeting bands of re- 
leased prisoners, Italians and Russians chiefly, 
with a few French and English mingled. They 
were worn and underfed — their clothes were in 
rags. A few had combined and were pulling 
their scanty belongings on little cars, such as 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 225 

children make out of soap-boxes. The motor- 
trucks returning to our base after bringing up 
the rations would take back as many as they 
could carry. 

We came across scarcely any civilians until 
we reached Bouligny, a once busy and pros- 
perous manufacturing town. A few of the in- 
habitants had been allowed to remain through- 
out the enemy occupation and small groups of 
those that had been removed were by now 
trickling in. The invader had destroyed prop- 
erty in the most ruthless manner, and the 
buildings were gutted. The domestic habits 
of the Hun were always to me inexplicable — ^he 
evidently preferred to live in the midst of his 
own filth, and many times have I seen recently 
captured chateaux that had been converted 
into veritable pigsties. 

The inhabitants went wild at our entry — in 
the little villages they came out carrying 
wreaths and threw confetti and flowers as they 
shouted the "Marseillaise." The infantry, 
marching in advance, bore the brunt of the 
celebrations. WTiat interested me most were 
the bands of small children, many of them cer- 
tainly not over five, dancing along the streets 
singing their national anthem. It must have 



226 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

been taught them in secret. In the midst of a 
band were often an American soldier or two, 
in full swing, thoroughly enjoying themselves. 
The enthusiasm was all of it natural and un- 
inspired by alcohol, for the Germans had taken 
with them everything to drink that they had 
been unable to finish. 

Bouligny is not an attractive place — ^few 
manufacturing towns are — ^but we got the men 
well billeted under water-tight roofs, and we 
were able to heat water for washing. My 
striker found a large caldron and I luxuriated 
in a steaming bath, the first in over a month, 
and, what was more, I had some clean clothes 
to pull on when I got out. 

One evening, when returning from a near-by 
village, I met a frock-coated civilian who in- 
quired of me in German the way to Etain. I 
asked him who he was and what he wanted. 
He answered that he was a German but was 
tired of his country and wished to go almost 
anywhere else. He seemed altogether too ap- 
parent to be a spy, and even if he were I could 
not make out any object that he could gain, 
I have often wondered what became of him. 

The Boches had evidently not expected to 
give up their conquests, for they had built an 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 227 

enormous stone-and-brick fountain in the cen- 
tre of the town, and chiselled its name, "Hin- 
denburg Brunnen." Above the German can- 
teen or commissary shop was a great wooden 
board with "Gott strafe England" — a curi- 
ous proof of how bitterly the Huns hated Great 
Britain, for there were no British troops in the 
sectors in front of this part of the invaded 
territory. 

We worked hard "policing up" ourselves 
and our equipment during the few days we 
stayed at Bouligny. One morning all the 
townsfolk turned out in their best clothes, 
which had been buried in the cellars or hidden 
behind the rafters in the attics, to greet the 
President and Madame Poincare, who were 
visiting the most important of the liberated 
towns. It was good to hear the cheering and 
watch the beaming faces. 

On November 21 we resumed our march. 
Close to the border we came upon a large Ger- 
man cemetery, artistically laid out, with a 
group of massive statuary in the centre. There 
were some heroic-size granite statues of Boche 
soldiers in full kit with helmet and all, that were 
particularly fine. As we passed the stones 
marking the boundary-line between France 



228 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

and Lorraine there was a tangible feeUng of 
making history, and it was not without a 
thrill that we entered Aumetz and heard the 
old people greet us in French while the chil- 
dren could speak only German. The town was 
gay with the colors of France — ^produced from 
goodness knows where. Children were bal- 
ancing themselves on the barrels of aban- 
doned German cannon and climbing about 
the huge camouflaged trucks. We were now 
where France, Luxemburg, and Lorraine meet, 
and all day we skirted the borders of first one 
and then the other, halting for the night at the 
French town of Villerupt. The people went 
wild when we rode in — ^we were the first sol- 
diers of the Allies they had seen, for the Ger- 
mans entered immediately after the declara- 
tion of war, and the only poilus the townsfolk 
saw were those that were brought in as pris- 
oners. We were welcomed in the town hall — 
the German champagne was abominable but the 
reception was whole-hearted and the speeches 
were sincere in their jubilation. 

I was billeted with the mayor. Monsieur 
Georges. After dinner he produced two grimy 
bottles of Pol Roger — ^he said that he had been 
forced to change their hiding-place four times. 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 229 

and had just dug them up in his cellar. They 
were destined for the night of liberation. 
Monsieur Georges was thin and worn; he had 
spent two years in prison in solitary confine- 
ment for having given a French prisoner some 
bread. His eighteen-year-old daughter was 
imprisoned for a year because she had not in- 
formed the authorities as to what her father 
had done. No one in the family would learn a 
single word of German. They said that all 
French civilians were forced to salute the 
Germans, and each Sunday every one was com- 
pelled to appear in the market-place for gen- 
eral muster. The description of the departure 
of their hated oppressors was vivid — ^the men 
behind the lines knew the full portent of events 
and were sullen and crestfallen, but the sol- 
diers fresh from the front believed that Ger- 
many had won and was dictating her own terms; 
they came through with wreaths hung on their 
bayonets singing songs of victory. 

I had often wondered how justly the food 
supplies sent by America for the inhabitants 
of the invaded districts were distributed. 
Monsieur Georges assured me that the Ger- 
mans were scrupulously careful in this matter, 
because they feared that if they were not, the 



230 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

supplies would no longer be sent, and this 
would of course encroach upon their own re- 
sources, for even the Hun could not utterly 
starve to death the captured French civilians. 
The mayor told me of the joy the shipments 
brought and how when the people went to 
draw their rations they called it "going to 
America." We sat talking until far into the 
night before I retired to the luxury of a real 
bed with clean linen sheets. There was no 
trouble whatever in billeting the men — ^the 
townsmen were quarrelling as to who should 
have them. 

Next morning, with great regret at so soon 
leaving our willing hosts, we marched off into 
the Httle Duchy of Luxemburg. We passed 
through the thriving city of Esch with its 
great iron-mines. The streets were gay with 
flags, there w^ere almost as many Italian as 
French, for there is a large Italian colony, the 
members of which are employed in mining and 
smelting. Brass bands paraded in our honor, 
and we were later met by them in many of the 
smaller towns. The shops seemed well filled, 
but the prices were very high. The Germans 
seemed to have left the Luxemburgers very 
much to themselves, and I have little doubt 
but that they would have been at least as 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 231 

pleased to welcome victorious Bodies had af- 
fairs taken a different turn. Still they were 
glad to see us, for it meant the end of the isola- 
tion in which they had been living and the 
eventual advent of foodstuffs. 

As we rode along, the countryside was lovely 
and the smiling fields and hillsides made "ex- 
cursions and alarums" seem remote indeed. It 
felt unnatural to pass through a village with 
unscarred church spires and houses all intact — ■ 
such a change from battered, glorious France. 

We were immediately in the wake of the 
German army, and taken by and large they 
[must have been retiring in good order, for they 
left little behind. Our first night we spent at 
the village of Syren, eight kilometres from the 
capital of the Duchy. Billeting was not so 
easy now, for we were ordered to treat the in- 
habitants as neutrals, and when they objected 
we couldn't handle the situation as we did 
later on in Germany. No one likes to have 
soldiers or civilians quartered on him, and the 
Luxemburgers were friendly to us only as a 
matter of policy. Fortunately, the chalk marks 
of the Boche billeting officers had not been 
washed off the doors, and these told us how 
many men had been lodged in a given house. 

In my lodging I was accorded a most friendly 



232 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

reception, for my hostess was French. Her 
nephew had come up from Paris to visit her a 
few months before the outbreak of the war, 
and had been unable to get back to France. 
To avoid the dreaded internment camp he had 
successfully passed as a Luxemburger. In the 
regiment there were a number of men whose 
parents came from the Duchy; these and a 
few more who spoke German acquired a sud- 
den popularity among their comrades. They 
would make friends with some of the villagers 
and arrange to turn over their rations so that 
they would be cooked by the housewife and 
eaten with the luxurious accompaniment of 
chair and table. The diplomat would invite 
a few friends to enjoy with him the welcome 
change from the "slum" ladled out of the cal- 
drons of the battery rolling kitchen. I had al- 
ways supposed that I had in my battery a large 
number of men who could speak German — 
a glance over the pay-roll would certainly leave 
that impression — ^but when I came to test it 
out, I found that I had but four men who spoke 
sufficiently well to be of any use as interpreters. 
Next morning we made a winding, round- 
about march to Trintange. Here we were in- 
structed to settle down for a week or ten days* 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 233 

halt, and many worse places might have been 
chosen. The country was very broken, with 
hills and ravines. Little patches of woodland 
and streams dashing down rocky channels on 
their way to join the Moselle reminded one of 
Rock Creek Park in Washington. The weather 
couldn't be bettered; sharp and cold in the 
early morning with a heavy hoarfrost spread- 
ing its white mantle over everything, then out 
would come the sun, and the hills would be 
shrouded in mist. 

My billeting officer had arranged matters 
well, so we were comfortably installed and in 
good shape to "police up" for the final leg of 
the march to Coblenz. I had now my full 
allowance of officers — ^Lieutenants Furness, 
Brown, Middleditch, and Pearce. In active 
warfare discipline while stricter in some ways 
is more lax in others, and there were many 
small points that required furbishing. Close 
order drill on foot is always a great help in 
stiffening up the men, and such essentials as 
instruction in driving and in fitting harness 
required much attention. In the American 
army much less responsibility is given to the 
sergeants and corporals than in the British, 
but even so the spirit and efficiency of an or- 



234 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

ganization must depend largely on its non- 
commissioned oflBcers. We were fortunate in 
having an unusually fine lot — Sergeant Gush- 
ing was a veteran of the Spanish War. He had 
been a sailor for many years, and after he left 
the sea he became chief game warden of Massa- 
chusetts. In time of stress he was a tower of 
strength and could be counted upon to set his 
men an example of cool and judicious daring. 
The first sergeant, Armstrong, was an old 
regular army man, and his knowledge of drill 
and routine was invaluable to us. He thor- 
oughly understood his profession, and was re- 
markably successful in training raw men. 
Sergeants Grumbling, Kubelis, and Bauer were 
all of them excellent men, and could be relied 
upon to perform their duty with conscien- 
tious thoroughness under the most trying con- 
ditions. 

One afternoon I went in to Luxemburg with 
Colonel Collins, the battalion commander. 
The town looks thoroughly mediseval as you 
approach. It might well have been over its 
castle wall that Kingsley's knight spurred his 
horse on his last leap; as a matter of fact the 
village of Altenahr, where the poet laid the 
scene, is not so many miles away. The town 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 235 

is built along the ragged cliffs lining a deep, 
rocky canyon spanned by old stone bridges. 
The massive entrance-gates open upon pas- 
sages tunnelled through the hills, and although 
the modern part of the town boasts broad 
streets and squares, there are many narrow 
passageways winding around the ancient 
quarter. 

I went into a large bookstore to replenish 
my library, and was struck by the supply of 
post-cards of Marshal Foch and Kitchener and 
the King and Queen of Belgium. All had been 
printed in Leipzig, and when I asked the book- 
seller how that could be, he replied that he got 
them from the German commercial travellers. 
He said that he had himself been surprised at 
the samples shown him, but the salesman had 
remarked that he thought such post-cards 
would have a good sale in Luxemburg, and if 
such were the case "business was business," 
and he was prepared to supply them. There 
was even one of King Albert standing with 
drawn sword, saying: "You shall not violate 
the sacred soil of my country." A publication 
that also interested me was a weekly paper 
brought out in Hamburg and written in Eng- 
lish. It was filled with jokes, beneath which 



236 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

were German notes explaining any difficult or 
idiomatic words and phrases. With all their 
hatred of England the Huns still continued to 
learn English. 

Thanksgiving Day came along, and we set 
to work to provide some sort of a special feast 
for the men. It was most difficult to do so, for 
the exchange had not as yet been regulated 
and the lowest rate at which we could get marks 
was at a franc, and usually it was a franc 
and a quarter. Some one opportunely arrived 
from Paris with a few hundred marks that he 
had bought at sixty centimes. For the officers 
we got a suckling pig, which Mess Sergeant 
Braun roasted in the priest's oven. He even 
put the traditional baked apple in its mouth, 
a necessary adjunct, the purpose of which I 
have never discovered, and such stuffing as he 
made has never been equalled. We washed it 
down with excellent Moselle wine, for we were 
but a couple of miles from the vineyards along 
the river. In the afternoon I borrowed a 
bicycle from the burgomaster and trailed over 
to Elmen, where I found my brother just about 
to sit down to his Thanksgiving dinner served 
up by two faithful Chinamen, who had come 
to his regiment in a draft from the West Coast. 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 237 

After doing full justice to his fare I wended my 
way back to Trintange in the rain and dark. 

The next day we paid the men. For some it 
was the first time in ten months. To draw 
pay it was necessary to sign the pay-roll at the 
end of one month and be on hand at the end 
of the following month to receive the money. 
No one could sign unless his service record 
was at hand, and as this was forwarded to 
the hospital "through military channels" when 
a man was evacuated sick or wounded, it 
rarely reached his unit until several months 
after he returned. It may easily be seen why 
it was that an enlisted man often went for 
months without being able to draw his pay. 
This meant not only a hardship to him while 
he was without money, but it also followed 
that when he got it he had a greater amount 
than he could possibly need, and was more 
than apt to gamble or drink away his sudden 
accession of wealth. We always tried to make 
a man who had drawn a lot of back pay de- 
posit it or send it home. Mr. Harlow, the 
Y. M. C. A. secretary attached to the regi- 
ment, helped us a great deal in getting the 
money transferred to the United States. The 
men, unless they could spend their earnings 



238 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

immediately, would start a game of craps and 
in a few days all the available cash would have 
found its way into the pocket of the luckiest 
man. They would throw for appaUingly 
high stakes. On this particular pay-day we 
knew that the supply of wine and beer in the 
village was not sufficient to cause any serious 
trouble, and orders were given that no cognac 
or hard liquor should be sold. A few always 
managed to get it — all precautions to the con- 
trary notwithstanding. 

II 

On the 1st of December we once more re- 
sumed our march and at Wormeldange crossed 
over the Moselle River into Hunland. The 
streets of the first town through which we 
passed were lined with civilians, many of them 
only just out of uniform, and they scowled at 
us as we rode by, muttering below their breath. 
A short way out and we began to meet men 
still in the field-gray uniform; they smiled and 
tried to make advances but our men paid no 
attention. When we reached Onsdorf, which 
was our destination, the billeting officer re- 
ported that he had met with no difficulty. 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 239 

The inhabitants were most effusive and anxious 
to please in every way. Of course they were 
not Prussians, and no doubt were heartily 
tired and sick of war, but here, as throughout, 
their attitude was most distasteful to us — ^it 
was so totally lacking in dignity. We could 
not tell how much they were acting on their 
own initiative and to what extent they were fol- 
lowing instructions. Probably there was some- 
thing of both back of their conduct. Warn- 
ings had been issued that the Germans were 
reported to be planning a wholesale poison- 
ing of American officers, but I never saw any- 
thing to substantiate the belief. 

Next morning we struck across to the Saar 
River and followed it down to its junction with 
the Moselle. The woods and ravines were 
lovely, but from the practical standpoint the 
going was very hard upon the horses. We 
marched down through Treves, the oldest town 
in Germany, with a population of about thirty 
thousand. In the fourth century of our era 
Ausonius referred to it as *'Rome beyond the 
Alps," and the extent and variety of the Roman 
remains would seem to justify the epithet. 
We were halted for some time beside the most 
remarkable of these, the Porta Nigra, a huge 



240 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

fortified gateway, dating from the first cen- 
tury A. D. The cathedral is an impressive 
conglomeration of the architecture of many dif- 
ferent centuries — the oldest portion being a 
part of a Roman basilica of the fourth century, 
while the latest additions of any magnitude 
were made in the thirteenth. Most famous 
among its treasures is the "holy coat of 
Treves," believed by the devout to be the 
seamless garment worn by Christ at the cruci- 
fixion. The predominant religion of the neigh- 
borhood is the Roman Catholic, and on the 
occasions when the coat is exhibited the town 
is thronged by countless pilgrims. 

Leaving Treves we continued dowTi along 
the river-bank to Rawen Kaulin, where we 
turned inland for a few miles and I was as- 
signed to a village known as Eitelsbach. The 
inhabitants were badly frightened when we 
rode in — ^most of the men hid and the women 
stood on the door-steps weeping. I suppose 
they expected to be treated in the manner 
that they had behaved to the French and 
Belgians, and as they would have done by us 
had the situation been reversed. When they 
found they were not to be oppressed they be- 
came servile and fawning. I had my officers' 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 241 

mess in the schoolmaster's house. He had 
been a non-connnissioned officer of infant^^ 
and yet he wanted to send his daughters m o 
play the piano for us after dinner We would 
have despised the German less if he had been 
able to "hate" a little more after he was beaten 
and not so bitterly while he felt he was wmnmg. 
The country through which we mai-ched dur- 
ing the next few days was most beautiful. We 
followed the winding course of the "ver mak- 
ing many a double "S" turn. The steep hills 
came right to the bank; frequently the road 
waTcut into their sides. A village was tucked 
Tn wherever a bit of level plam betjeen^he 
foot of the hill and the river permitted ^en 
the slopes gave a southern exposure they ^^•ere 
covered with grape-vmes, planted with the 
utmost precision and regularity. Every corner 
and cranny among the rocks was utd.zed. 
The original planting must have been difficu t, 
for the soil was covered with slabs of shale 
The cultivator should develop excellent ungs 
in scaling those hillsides. The leaves had fallen 
Tnd the bare vines varied in hue from sepia 
brown to wine color, with occasional patches 
of Tvergreen to set off the whole. Once or 
twice the road left the river to cut across over 



242 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDfeN 

the mountains, and it cost our horses much 
exertion to drag the hmbers up the steep, 
sHppery trail. It was curious to notice the 
difference between those who dwelt along the 
bank and the inhabitants of the upland pla- 
teau. The latter appeared distinctly more 
*' outlandish" and less sleek and prosperous. 
The highlands we found veiled in mist, and as 
I looked back at the dim outlines of horse and 
man and caisson, it seemed as if I were leading 
a ghost battery. 

We were in the heart of the wine country, and 
to any one who had enjoyed a good bottle of 
Moselle such names as Berncastel and Piesport 
had long been familiar. In the former town I 
was amused on passing by a large millinery 
store to see the proprietor's name was Jacob 
Astor. The little villages inevitably recalled 
the fairy-tales of Hans Andersen and the 
Grimm brothers. The raftered houses had 
timbered balconies that all but met across the 
crooked, winding streets through which we 
clattered over the cobblestones. Capping 
many of the beams were gargoyles, demons, and 
dwarfs, and a galaxy of strange creatures were 
carved on the ends of the gables that jutted 
out every which way. The houses often had 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 243 

the date they were built and the initials of the 
couple that built them over the front door, 
frequently with some device. I saw no dates 
that went further back than the late sixteen 
hundreds, though many of the houses doubt- 
less were built before then. The doors in some 
cases were beautifully carved and weathered. 
The old pumps and wells, the stone bridges, 
and the little wayside shrines took one back 
through the centuries. To judge by the rec- 
ords carved on wall and house, high floods are 
no very uncommon occurrence — the highest I 
noticed was in 1685, while the last one of im- 
portance was credited to 1892. 

We were much surprised at the well-fed ap- 
pearance of the population, both old and young, 
for we had heard so much of food shortages, 
and the Germans when they surrendered had 
laid such stress upon it. As far as we could 
judge, food was more plentiful than in France. 
Rubber and leather were very scarce, many of 
the women wore army boots, and the shoes 
displayed in shop-windows appeared made of 
some composition resembling pasteboard. The 
coffee was evidently ground from the berry of 
some native bush, and its taste in no way re- 
sembled the real. Cigars were camouflaged 



244 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

cabbage-leaves, with little or no flavor, and 
the beer sadly fallen off from its pre-war glory. 
Still, in all the essentials of life the inhabitants 
appeared to be making out far better than we 
had been given to believe. 

We met with very little trouble. There were 
a few instances where people tried to stand out 
against having men billeted in their houses, 
but we of course paid no attention except 
that we saw to it that they got more men than 
they would have under ordinary circumstances. 
Every now and then we would have amusing 
side-lights upon the war news on which the 
more ignorant Boches had been fed. A man 
upon whom several of my sergeants were quar- 
tered asked them if the Zeppelins had done 
much damage to New York ; and whether Bos- 
ton and Philadelphia had yet been evacuated 
by the Germans — ^he had heard that both cities 
had been taken and that Washington was 
threatened and its fall imminent. 

Our men behaved exceedingly well. Of 
course there were individual cases of drunken- 
ness, but very few considering that we were 
in a country where the wine was cheap and 
schnapps plentiful. There were the inevitable 
A. W. O. L.'s and a number of minor offenses, 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY U5 

'but I found that by making the prisoner's life 
very unattractive — seeing to it that they per- 
formed distasteful "fatigues," giving them 
heavy packs to carry when we marched, and 
allowing them nothing that could be construed 
as a delicacy — I soon reformed the few men 
that were chronically shiftless or untidy or late. 
"When not in cantonments the trouble with 
putting men under arrest is that too often it 
only means that they lead an easier life than 
their comrades, and it takes some ingenuity 
to correct this situation. WTienever it was in 
any way possible an offender was dealt with 
in the battery and I never let it go further, for 
I found it made for much better spirit in a unit. 
The men were a fine lot, and such thorough- 
going Americans, no matter from what country 
their parents had come. One of my buglers 
had landed in the United States only in 1913; 
he had been born and brought up on the con- 
fines of Germany and Austria, and yet when a 
large German of whom he was asking the way 
said, "You speak the language well^your 
parents must be German," the unhesitating 
reply was: "Well, my mother was of German 
descent !" The battery call read like a League 
of Nations, but no one could have found any 



246 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

cause of complaint in lack of loyalty to the 
United States. 

The twelfth day after we had crossed over 
the river from Luxemburg found us marching 
into Coblenz. We were quartered in large 
brick barracks in the outskirts of the city. 
The departing Germans had left them in very 
bad shape, and Hercules would have felt that 
cleaning the Augean stables was a light task in 
comparison. However, we set to work with- 
out delay and soon had both men and horses 
well housed. Life in the town was foUow^ing 
its normal course; the stores were well stocked 
and seemed to be doing a thriving trade. We 
went into a cafe where a good orchestra was 
playing and had some very mediocre war beer, 
and then I set off in search of the Turkish bath 
of which I was much in need. The one I found 
was in charge of an ex-submarine sailor, and 
when I was shut in the steam-room I won- 
dered if he were going to try any "f rightful- 
ness," for I was the only person in the bath. 
My last one had been in a wine- vat a full week 
before, and I was ready to risk anything for 
the luxury of a good soak. 

Orders to march usually reached us at mid- 
night — ^why, I do not know; but we would turn 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 247 

in with the belief that we would not move on 
the following day, and the next we knew an 
orderly from regimental headquarters would 
wake us with marching instructions, and m no 
happy frame of mind we would grumblmgly 
tumble out to issue the necessaiy commands 
Coblenz proved no exception to this rule. As 
we got under way, a fine ram was falhng 
that was not long in permeating eyerythmg. 
Through the misty dripping town the cais- 
sons went rolling along," and out across the 
Ptaffendorf bridge, with the dim outhnes of 
the fortress of Ehrenbreitstein towering above 
us The men were drowsy and cold. 1 heard a 
tew disparaging comments on the size of 
the Rhine. They had heard so much talk 
about it that they had expected to find it at 
kast as large as the Mississippi. We found 
the slippery stones of the street ascending 
from the river most difficult to negotiate, but 
at length everything was safely up, and we 
struck off toward the bridge-head position 
which we were to occupy for we knew not how 
Ion" The Huns had torn down the sign-posts 
at the crossroads; with what intent I cannot 
imagine, for the roads were not complicated 
and were clearly indicated on the maps, and 



248 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

the only purpose that the sign-posts could 
serve was to satisfy a curiosity too idle to 
cause us to calculate by map how far we had 
come or what distance lay still before us. A 
number of great stone slabs attracted our at- 
tention ; they had been put up toward the close 
of the eighteenth century and indicated the 
distance in hours. I remember one that pro- 
claimed it was three hours to Coblenz and 
eighteen to Frankfort. I have never seen else- 
where these records of an age when time did 
not mean money. 

The march was in the nature of an anti- 
climax, for we had thought always of Coblenz 
as our goal, and the good fortune in which we 
had played as regarded weather during our 
march down the valley of the Moselle had made 
us supercritical concerning such details as a long, 
wearisome slogging through the mud in clumsy, 
water-logged clothes. At length we reached the 
little village of Niederelbert and found that 
Lieutenant Brown, whose turn it was as bil- 
leting officer, had settled us so satisfactorily 
that in a short time we were all comfortably 
steaming before stoves, thawing out our 
cramped joints. 

With the exception of Lieutenant Furness 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 249 

my officers belonged to the Reserve Corps, and 
we none of us looked forward to a long tour 
of garrison duty on the Rhine or anywhere else. 
Furness, who had particularly distinguished 
himself in liaison work with the infantry, held 
a temporary commission in the regular army, 
but he was eager to go back to civil life at 
the earliest opportunity. In Germany the 
prospect was doubly gloomy, for there would 
be no intercourse with the natives such as in 
France had lightened many a weary moment. 
Several days later regimental headquarters 
coveted our village and we were moved a few 
miles off across the hills to Holler. We set 
to work to make ourselves as snug and com- 
fortable as possible. I had as striker a little 
fellow of Finnish extraction name Jahoola, an 
excellent man in every way, who took the best 
of care of my horse and always managed to fix 
up my billet far better than the circumstances 
would seem to permit. 

The days that followed presented little 
variety once the novelty of the occupation had 
worn off. The men continued to behave in 
exemplary fashion, and the Boche gave little 
trouble. As soon as we took up our quarters 
we made the villagers clean up the streets and 



250 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

yards until they possessed a model town, and 
thereafter we "policed up" every untidiness of 
which we might be the cause, and kept the in- 
habitants up to the mark in what concerned 
them. The head of the house in which I was 
lodged in Niederelbert told me that his son 
had been a captain in the army but had de- 
serted a fortnight before the armistice and 
reached home in civilian clothes three weeks 
in advance of the retreating army. Of course 
he was not an officer before the war — not of 
the old military school, but the fact that he 
and his family were proud of it spoke of a 
weakening discipline and morale. 

Now that we had settled down to a routine 
existence I was doubly glad of such books as I 
had been able to bring along. Of these, O. 
Henry was the most popular. The little shil- 
ling editions were read until they fell to pieces, 
and in this he held the same position as in the 
British army. I had been puzzled at this 
popularity among the English, for much of 
his slang must have been worse than Greek to 
them. I also had Charles 0' Motley and Harry 
Lorrequer, Dumas' Dame de Monsereau and 
Monte Crista, Flaubert's Education. Senti- 
mentale, Gibbon's Rise and Fall, and Sorrow's 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 251 

Zincali. These with the Oxford Books of 
French and Enghsh verse and a few Portu- 
guese and Spanish novels comprised my H- 
brary, a large one considering the circum- 
stances. It was always possible to get books 
through the mail, although they were generally 
many months en route. 

Soon after we reached the bridge-head, officers 
of the regular army began turning up from the 
various schools whither they had been sent as 
instructors. We all hoped to be released in 
this manner, for we felt that the garrison duty 
should be undertaken by the regulars, whose 
life business it is, in order to allow the men who 
had left their trades and professions to return 
to their normal and necessary work. In the 
meantime we set out to familiarize ourselves 
with the country and keep our units in such 
shape that should any unforeseen event arise 
we would be in a position to meet it. The 
horses required particular attention, but one 
felt rewarded on seeing their improvement. 
There were many cases of mange which we had 
been hitherto unable to properly isolate, and 
good fodder in adequate quantity was an inno- 
vation. 

For the men we had mounted and un- 



252 WAR IN THE GARDEN OF EDEN 

mounted drill, and spent much time in getting 
the accoutrements into condition for inspec- 
tion. During part of the march up rations 
had been short, and for a number of days were 
very problematical. Sufficient boots and cloth- 
ing were also lacking and we had had to get 
along as best we could without. Now that we 
were stationary our wants were supplied, and 
the worst hardship for the men was the lack 
of recreation. A reading-room was opened 
and a piano was procured, but there was really 
no place to send them on short passes; nothing 
for them to do on an afternoon off. When I 
left, trips down the Rhine were being planned, 
and I am sure they proved beneficial in solv- 
ing the problem of legitimate relaxation and 
amusement. 

My father had sent my brother and myself 
some money to use in trying to make Christ- 
mas a feast-day for the men. It was difficult 
to get anything, but the Y. M. C. A. very kindly 
helped me out in procuring chocolates and 
cigarettes, and I managed to buy a couple of 
calves and a few semi-delicacies in the local 
market. While not an Arabian Night feast, we 
had the most essential adjunct in the good spir- 
its of the men, who had been schooled by their 



IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 253 

varied and eventful existence of the past 
eighteen months to make the most of things. 

In the middle of January my brother and 
I left for Paris. I was very sorry to leave 
the battery, for we had been through much 
together, but in common with most reserve 
oJBScers I felt that, now that the fighting was 
over, there was only one thing to be desired and 
that was to get back to my wife and children. 
The train made light of the distance over 
which it had taken us so long to march, and 
the familiar sight of the friendly French towns 
was never more welcome. After several months 
on duty in France and Italy, I sailed on a 
transport from Brest, but not for the wonderful 
home-coming to which I had so long looked 
forward. 

The End 



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